[Quiet Man Cometh]

Tarja was rapidly growing impatient with the banter between Sin and her “son,” but the demon’s sudden lunge for his mother, and subsequent burrowing beneath her flesh, was enough to rattle her perceptions, more-so than their shift in surroundings. Then the birthing began, and the great hounds that spawned from Sin’s coils made howls of their own.

She’d had enough with speeches.

Barely paying attention to the Kadia and her psychic tornado, Tarja focused the tiny particles in the air around her, in the stone, in the blood spewing from wounds, coalescing and weaving them into a shield around her. She would only have this one attempt. Time was a fleeting luxury, and the speeches were done.

When the darkness surged forth, she reached back with her mind, grasping the particles in the air surrounding the hounds, urging them into more rapid movement, movement beyond even her own psychic vision. Shimmers of heat begin to waver in the air around the hounds, around Sin.

Dust and hanging shrouds smoldered in the heated air, smoking and coiling, flash fires erupted and extinguished in the blink of one eye. Lev would have time, if he needed it, before Sin was cooked through. Tarja wasn’t so sure about herself.

[Espy]

Oh no. Not this. Not again.

But this time, it was different. This time, Dante could feel his skin burning, the searing flames shooting up his arms.

At least he wasn't dead. But then again, it was likely he would be in just a few minutes. Again.

He reached out with his mind. There was nothing. The nauseating aura the snake-woman had been coated with -- yes, coated as if the light had been layers upon layers of silk, or soap films -- was gone, but the pressure in his head still remained. The suffocating darkness threatened to overwhelm him.

But isn't it the same? A small, yet persistent, voice crept in from the inner recesses, the long-forgotten depths of his mind. The same as before. It was true. The darkness, the feeling of being completely lost -- it was something familiar to him, something he had thought was a weakness, shoved into a dusty coffin, and nailed shut. In the pitch black of blindness, anything could be out there, things that he couldn't see but could likely see him. If there was only a way to make himself invisible as well.

He took a deep breath. He couldn't see any of the usual green flowing around himself, but he could feel it.

Dante inhaled again and unholstered the gun the priest had given him weeks ago, mentally willing the now-invisible green tendrils to come back. He felt their presence lessen, not completely, but even this little bit could possibly help. It would be difficult to maintain for long.

Taking note of where he had last seen his traveling...companions, Dante ran sideways, doing his best to dodge the flames as they sped towards Sin, and fired a volley at the hounds.

[Lawtan]

Before her, the enemy lay, its coils and obscene body bulging, as with some unnatural pregnancy. Kadia marched towards the creature, rage defying common sense. Her eyes counted the multiple bulges, before they ripped out into ferocious hellish hounds. She directed the tornado, the ferocious column of metal and granite towards the newest creatures…no…they were part of the serpentine demoness. Kadia resumed her original target, but her aim was off. The spiraling columns hit the chords connecting beast to mother, and parts of the tornado crumbled. Cursing, Kadia forced the fallen pieces up. Kadia accessed the energy of the air itself, and forced a change in energy. The air around began to flux, and convectional activity lead to a twisting of the air, and the pressure was drained from all objects nearby. A pulling... Her heart racing with the strain, and only her rage staving off sheer mental pain, Kadia raised a second tornado.

Then, blackness, blindness. What vile magic was this!? There was no sense of the floor beneath. Kadia couldn’t feel her own breathing…but her rage continued. As if feeling objects with numb limbs, she continued the tornadoes spinning. Through remembered motion, she held them up. A spark of intelligence in the mental storm told her that an inwards spiral would inevitably slam into the beasts. Forcing the core of both artificial tornadoes to move, Kadia began to spin with her columns of destruction. They edged closer to a cluster of three beasts. The hellhounds snapped at the wind.
Within, Kadia was blind. There were no friends, no good. All was black, and all in her way would perish! The youthful, playful Kadia – the child – hid away in a small corner of the mind. Each moment in the darkness caused her logic and reason to hide away with the child further…further. To the conscious part of Kadia, it was as if hanging in complete nothingness, where the endless void…no, even void was absent…and here she was striking at nothing in pure instinct. Forged in the abuse of her youth, the huntress…no, the Maiden of Death.
A spark lit as flint and steel met the divine core, and a column of flame erupted within the original tornado.

------

Rurik readied his net, his tail pointing at one of the beasts whose connection to Sin remained.

Target_23 == enemy

If Target() == enemy, then initiate peogram.attack()

Initiating…

Target.strength == overpowering

Activate net…

Net activated…

Firing…

From a chrome-steel tail, a hole appeared. A flash of gunpowder, and an object was ejected from the tail. It expanded, a fishermans net. However, it was a flexible metal, woven steel…and every crossing of the net had a long, barbed with diamond-shards. The net was hollow, with a mysterious liquid inside…blessed water mixed with crushed cherry bark, concentrated for its cyanide. Through the barbs, a hole carried the stuff into its enemies. Arcing across the room, Rurik’s projectile hit one of the beasts with impeccable accuracy. The net wrapped around the head like a living vine of thorns. The creature howled with pain, as holy poison entered its system. Jaws snapped and fractured with the net. Fluid accumulated and drained, yet through the blood, the skin restructured and grew over, sealing the poisonous web to the flesh. Holy cyanide continued to run through the beast's system.

As the darkness engulfed Rurik, he found himself full of...Kadia. Kadia's consciousness, to escape from the boiling rage, had sequestered a good part of herself in her robotic soul-bound companion. Rurik, who was accustomed to a lack of sensory function, was momentarily overwhelmed by the additional strain.

[Salone]

Na'lsa continued to burrow in a maddening ecstasy, boring through flesh and tissue like some sort of monstrous parasite. The Sins he consumed were absorbed, assimilated, and repurposed within him. The number rose higher and higher as he feasted. Nearly formed physical manifestations as well as the mere fetus of several were consumed in his blind hunger. He mangled several dozen wombs, violating the protection they offered his unborn brethren. Umbilical cords were devoured in mass like some sort of putrid spaghetti dish, stuffed in to his all-consuming maw. But it was not enough. This mere hellspawn unborn was insufficient.

He clawed upwards. Gnawing through bone and sinew led him away from the wombs, through Sin's organs. Oh, what ancient and delicate meats pulsed before him! With stifled laughter, he began his meal again. He was pressed tightly on each side, but his unending hunger would soon carve his own space among the origin of many Sins. Nothing else mattered. He would eat. He would glut himself on the unending meal that he swam in. After millenia, Na'lsa had finally realized the purpose he was meant to have.

The taste of sin was so sweet, so delectable. And all those inhabited by it would be claimed by his hunger.

[Lawtan]

Kadia’s mind was in the dark…there was nothing. Where was she? She hung in silence, no light…no absence of light…no feeling. Waiting…nothing. Waiting…nothing. Kadia, surrounded by the absence, wrapped herself in memories most recently recalled…dark memories, but recollections of feeling. In the current situation, feeling was all memory, and worse for it.

She recalled…a strange face, a leer, a sneer, visiting her father…talking in whispers she could not hear. Her father turned, saw her, and glared with promise…promise of the crack of a riding crop.

Kadia was excited. She would be free of the controls at last. Free… She slipped past the sleeping forms of that man and woman, stealth training serving her well With footsteps of feathers, she crept towards the riding crop. A spark of fear was quelled. Grasping its base, Kadia twisted and popped off the hollow grip. A key…

She tried the door. Nothing. Hmm…the weapons? She tried the key…success! She took the twin swords, pocketed euros and food, a sleeping bag and water filter, and returned to the door. Kadia gazed at the thing, barred to her for so long, and sliced it open with a few swings of the sword. Freedom…

The stars shone outside, and the air was different. The streets, though filthy, represented opportunity. Adventure, life, dreams…Kadia walked along, partially lost in fantasy of success.

Then, cold…hands that burned. The hands grabbed her. Fear. Kadia tried to escape, flipping, tugging, shifting, sliding…no use. The hands were like tentacles, and began pulling her down an alley. Kadia soon met with that face…the sneering leer of a lusty man…

He said little, but the tentacles…not visible…began to disrobe her. No…no…no…I can fight him. I have been trained to… This can’t be possible…

A sharp pain ran through her system, and Kadia was locked in her thoughts away from the terrible moment…

That sneer…Sin…those limbs…tentacles…

She awoke to the dawn with an acrid smell and a filthy feeling..and hunger. Her clothing rags, but her swords still available, Kadia stumbled into a building. Blurry-eyed, she pulled spare clothing on and took a guzzle of water. Pouring some over her eyes, Kadia looked around. The building was in ruin, corroded…burned. Skeletal forms leaned against the wall, their skulls forms bursted from boiling temperatures. Gasping, Kadia ran out. Smoke filled the sky.

Building by building was ruined, a few struggling scavengers the only life in the alleyways. Kadia made her way to her home, fearing what she would find. Bloodtrails went in insane paths. Upon reaching home…ash…there was no building form left. No bodies…no metal…only ash in the form of a reverse pentagram. Kadia fell to her knees in shock…

-----

Kadia’s body swung around in a pirouette, like an active puppet without a puppeteer. The tornado of metal and stone slammed into a hell-beast, tearing its mouth open and filling the inside with jagged pieces. The howl was stolen from the beast. A force so great began ripping it apart from the inside, yet no damage was done to the skin…or bone of the beast.

-----

Rurik sought the shielded presence in his circuits. His reaching caused an outside sensation, triggering another memory for Kadia…

Target.mistress unresponsive…
Trying to reach Mistress…

-----

Kadia was held down by three men, leather vests, guns, and bikes in the background. In the alley…they needed release. “Annoying whore, get down!” Glen, the leader of the group, was ready to take position. One would have thought that a lack of resistance would have been enough to prevent the clammy calloused hands from holding her down.
However, as Kadia did not fling herself at the men, she was “uncoorerative.” Despite learning to heal them. Despite stealing for them, she was uncooperative where it counted. So, the stones took out their piercing frustrations on her while the man tore off her clothing, with several stinging slaps to her face for good measure. Then, the man gave that look…that sneer…

A strange emotional power, greater than any of her psychokinetic abilities, came, filling her with feelings heretofore absent. Hate…red blood pouring exploding satisfactory vengeance hate,,, Suddenly a spark went off in one of the gas-powered motor vehicles. Then another. Then one of the men holding her screamed, stepping back. His skin, flaying…piece by piece…dripping blood and pus and urine as he died.Fires began twirling as the airflow was shifted…a fiery whirlwind burned the faces off of two others. Glen felt something rise on his legs. Kadia’s eyes were covered by her pupil, reflecting his shock. With an insane grin, she pulled the earth itself up his body, swallowing his screams alive while pulling the invading…thing away from her. Kadia passed out.

-----

“…Rurik?...”

-----

One hellbeast cried silently as its organs turned to mush, pouring hellish liquid into its system. The tornado moved on to a second hellbeast, its mouth closed, ripping at its ears and knocking it to the ground.

Kadia’s body spun faster and faster, sending the fiery tornado up higher and wider. The fire tornado spread out, wider and hotter, engulfing a hellbeast. Though the fur burned, it merely growled in the flames, now a 50 meter monster. Heat met the cold absence, and mixed, beginning to spread with the darkness…

A beast moved towards the pirouetting form, giant jaw gaping to snap. Blood sprayed...

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Inert and unfeelng, bound by invisible shackles, tethered to darkness in every ordination of time or space, alone with the singularity of his mind. Ancient mystics would have called it transcendence, a liminal state, oneness with the mind of God, unity through dissolving, self-annihilation.

It was nothing of the sort.

Out-of-body experiences were a trivial thing, a second nature to this new psionic breed of humanity. Total environmental awareness, at all times, and to have that taken away...

Blindness, on a plane inconceivable to a living mind. Trapped in a house of memories, instincts, and ideations where every door was a mirror opening to another distortion of himself. Naked, in a world without eyes.

The triumph of solipsism.

Diogenes was going mad.

But madness was relative, and the universe no longer existed. He was not so different from God, in this newfound paradigm of existence. None would argue the point, at least.

A circuit of electrical life edifying itself into self-contemplation over the paradox of identity in a realm without definition.

Somewhere, he knew, his body lay slumped and useless, his brain, the divine impetus of this new creation, toiling on in dumb persistence, ignorant to the marvelous fractals within itself. Somewhere, Hell reigned with every conceivable abomination. And he found he did not care.

He had become limitless, unfettered, uncreated in the most sublime sense. There was only his will, and its assessment of its own conception. There was everything, existent within a specific instance, a thought-space.

I am greater than myself, than which nothing greater can be.

Existence is impossible. I exist.

α = ~α

√-1 = √-1

.9‾ = 1

x/0

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. The Beginning and the End.

God has no beginning, nor end.

God is all things.

If I am not God, I am nothing.

Nothing am I.

There is no thing that is me.

EGO ERGO NON SUM.

EGO ERGO NON SUM

EGO ERGO NON SUM

NIHIL

NIHIL

NIHIL

NIHIL

--------------

But madness, like the narcotic gasses used by those mystics of old, was fleeting.

Diogenes at once became aware of several things.

The first, that he was once more aware, at all.

The second, that he was in pain. A gale of fire had blasted him across the chamber and pinned him to the far wall, igniting his robe, left burning for however long it had taken his senses to clear.

With his psychic sight, he could see his own face, his naked form, burned to smoking, liquefying tissue. The tattoo on his chest protected the flesh there, but all else was char and ruin. He had only his mind.

Sin's brood had been taken aback, staggered by the furious assault of his companions who had evidently not suffered as he had from the catatonia they exhaled. But it would not last long. Those flames were meaningless to creatures who bathed in the magmatic oceans of Hell.

The missiles were readied, about to be launched, but in these winds, they would go wild. They had been a desperate plan, at any rate. The ordinance transceiver was a smoldering streak of melted plastic running down his chest, a broken Damoclean blade.

This assault was futile. No force of fire could harm an Incarnation like Sin. However her noxious brood might reel in pain, the Hell-Mother was indifferent to the battle raging within the delineation of her coils.

There was but one recourse. Diogenes did not know if he had it within him.

Setting aside agony, calling upon an iron focus of will, he called up the Network inside his mindscape, inputting the psykhordinates of his master. Diogenes drafted a frantic message.

Hell is revealed. The Satan-spawn and Her bastard brood. We are overcome.

A final surge of sparking axons to hurl the words into the ether. A meaningless prayer, to hope they found their mark, for vengeance if not salvation.

And a return to the nothingness awaiting him.

[Espy]

And the darkness retreated. Perhaps not enough to stimulate the normal eye, but for Dante, Sin's shimmering soap-film-like glow was now visible, as was the redness of the Hounds, weaving itself into and out of the surface of their flesh like the streams of a solar flare.

At the same time, the scalding heat presented itself fully, and nearly bit through his lip. The decision to leap sideways had perhaps saved his life, but the others...

Kadia's green, darker than his own, sprayed out, a sharp contrast against the snaking red. Blood. Dante tumbled through the air, changing course as his boots his the solid ground. Glancing back he noticed a red string, frayed but not yet cut through, and the whipblade shot out.

Did I...Did that work? But there was no time to check, and Dante whirled around, the sharp segments of the blade burying themselves into the Hound. It dropped the green form.

...I might have just become its next meal, and even as he thought this, even as his sword came whirling back to him, the Hound seemed staggered back, Dante's bullets catching it in its lower jaw. Then, out of nowhere, its tail thudded into his chest and he flew into the wall, the lights of auras flickering.

He felt bile rising up, and mentally forced himself to not be sick, his breaths coming in short gulps. We can't hold this for much longer. Why had they been sent here to die? What did the Celetrine think they would have accomplished?

Those fuckers.

The rage-produced adrenaline shot through his system, and finally, his vision grew sharper.

And he noticed...an ivory pinprick? No, it grew...definitely not just a pinprick. The aura took almost a crystalline form, yet pulsated--

And then it was gone, masked by the fiery Hellhound hide. But it had been there.

Our objective. The crown. He clambered to his feet, took a deep breath, and ran, foregoing any sort of attack on the Hounds, on Sin, sliding under their bellies.

Like moth to flame, perhaps?

[Quiet Man Cometh]

The tornado’s winds cleared the darkness from before her shield and Tarja could see now that the flames and heat were doing nothing to the hounds that remained. She could not drop her shield, as broken pieces of the tower spun wildly about and the flames consumed much of the air, but there was nothing else she could do.

The dust, the heat, the ruin, and a welcoming party of Hell’s rejected. If there was a threshold to her focus, Tarja felt she was getting close, and close was just enough for one of the hounds.

A small psychic stumble, perhaps an eye-blink in reaction to sudden light, and her body armour was shattering, thick teeth puncturing cloth and skin as hot breath rolled over her flesh like her own blood.

Tarja roared, a mixture of pain and anger. She snarled as though she meant to bite back, but instead fisted what she could of the hound’s taut hide and mentally hurled the beast into the turret wall. Teeth still clenched savagely to her arm and shoulder, Tarja was carried with it until both smashed through stone and mortar, daylight flooding in through the broken wall, dust and debris flying out of it.

The hound hit first. She felt the impact when her body snapped over beast’s ribcage. The hell-hound lay on its side, snarling through teeth still holding her useless left arm, attached to a shoulder hanging low from a broken collar bone. Forcing herself as upright as she could manage, Tarja mentally impacted the side of the hound’s head, accompanying each telekinetic pulse with a blow from her fist and a string of curses.

One tooth broken.

Two.

The hell-hound was rising to its feet.

Three.

Popping sounds Tarja barely heard echoed a short distance away, and the hound’s hide began to ripple, undulating with small crater impacts and eruptions of blood. Bloodied jaws opened and Tarja fell back onto the dirt. The hound swung its massive head to face the bullet shower, turned and bellowed. A cloud of dark fell from its mouth again, this time towards the incoming infantry vehicle, machine gun turrets on rapid fire. It dispersed easily, but the hound was no longer behind it. It was in the air. Dirt scattered in Tarja’s face as its claws ripped into the terrain and it launched itself high, easily to the height of the broken wall they had come through, and towards the vehicle.

The front of the vehicle slammed into the dirt as the hell-hound landed on top of it, suspension groaning as spinning wheels kicked up more dirt and dust. It wrapped its jaws around the edge of the roof and bit down, then it began to pull. Metal shrieked, bolts popped as it heaved at the armour plating. It opened a hole large enough to fit one paw and thrashed about, swiping wildly at the soldier's inside as it forced its body side to side, metal plates warping and buckling as it shouldered it's way further in.

One of the guns stopped, the remaining weapons aimed towards the hound's back, boring holes into its spine. More gun fire sounded from inside the vehicle, punctuated with deep, wet growls and watery breathing. Head and shoulders buried in twisted metal, the hound started to stagger, its body sagged and its snarling dropped to a low, monotonous growl.

Lying flat, Tarja collected her wits and gathered her breath.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

You return to me at last.

Beloved child.

My God-damned son.

Fruit of my body. Mine own begotten. Na'lsa.

Yesssssssss. Feast. Gorge. Drink your fill of me. Revel. Succor. Nourish. CONSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUME! There can be no end, infinite hunger and my infinite adoration for you, dear dear son. Progeny of my violation.

You return to the womb, to me. Among all your sisters and brothers, you. Na'lsa. Do not all sons wish for this?

And hear Him without, your Father and Brother both: Death, my atrocious firstborn. His soul is in the beasts he sired, but it is not in you. Oh no, precious, wondrous, pristine Na'lsa.

Raven me! Ravage! Devour! Choke! Vomit!

THIS IS THE COMMUNION OF HELL

THE UNION OF MOTHER AND SON

HE DOTH PROCEED FROM THE MOTHER AND THROUGH THE MOTHER IS ABHORRED AND DEFILED

LUST FROM LUST. GLUT FROM GLUT. TRUE SIN FROM TRUE SIN.

AND HE ROSE FROM HELL.

AND BY THE POWER OF HIS OWN SPIRIT, WAS MADE MAN.

FOR MANKIND, FOR THE FLOWER OF DAMNATION, HE WAS MADE TO LIVE.

AND HIS HUNGER SHALL KNOW NO END.

MY ABOMINABLE SPAWN. MY GLORIOUS ONE. MY NA'LSA.

SATHANAS DOMINI, SATHANAS GLORIAE HALLELUJAH AMEN AMEN!

[Salone]

With a great strength Na'lsa ripped himself from Sin's body. Limbs and teeth met skin and scale and forced their separation from each other in a vile mockery of birth. The gape was split further, tearing along the seams of muscle until it would go no further. Meat hung in tatters and then forced itself around his form as he issued out. Gore and fluid gushed from the wound, ushering the twisted child back in to the world. Back in to the hell tainted plane. Back to the hell hounds. Back to the suffering mortals. Back to it all.

Na'lsa fell upon the ground, screaming feral defiance. Blood poured in to his eyes. His hair and skin were matted with fluid. Clothes hung sopping with crimson. He was bathed in it. Baptized in it.

He laughed maniacally. His head rolled back, and the blood covering his body was absorbed in to him. Became part of him. Entered unto his body and was consumed. Reprocessed. Repurposed.

And no sooner had he exited one body, he set forth to enter another.

The crazed...thing brought himself to stand, grinning towards the hell hounds. With a voice much too loud for his form, he issued challenge.

"TAKE ME."

He laughed. He laughed as one of the hell hounds charged him. He laughed as it opened its sizzling gaping mouth. He laughed as it lunged. He laughed still as its mighty jaws closed in around him.

His flesh melted between in the cavernous mouth. Bones were split apart by mountainous teeth. Na'lsa puddled in to a blood-laden mess of kibble as he slid down the unholy throat of the beast.

And he laughed.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Emerging from the nightmare has brought a consummation of chaos. As soon as the order is given, Diogenes' men fall into formation and begin to open fire with their grenade launchers. The filters on their helmets prevent exposure to the hellish gas the things breathe out. Yet fire is the Hounds' blood and bile, and the concussion of explosives does does only minimal damage. Focusing fire on a single beast, they manage to wound and perhaps cripple it, though writhing against its mother's coils, it is far from dead.

When the firestorm erupts, they cease fire and retreat to form a defensive cordon around Diogenes. Encased in a ton and more of nanite-braced ceramic-titanium, they are unscathed by the holocaust, unlike their commander who is hurled violently away and and burns helplessly. The whipping gales and walls of psionic force that sweep across the room prevent them from going immediately to his aid. When they finally break through, the assassin is near to death, only his adamantine will and the defensive tattoo covering his organs allow him to cling to life.

While the other four form a defensive perimeter, conserving their dwindling supplies of grenades unless truly needed, the fifth wastes no time extinguishing the flames consuming Diogenes and beginning to administer aid to the faltering psychic. Parsing apart the charred tissue of his neck with the needle's tip, he finds Diogenes' carotid artery and injects an entire syringe of Eden water into his system.

While the immediate flesh begins to mend, the serum does not travel to where it is most needed. His heart has stopped. Once more bringing out the emergency defibrillator, he performs the same procedure on Diogenes that he did to Thomas earlier, slitting open his ribs with the monomolecular edge of his combat knife and clamping the electrodes to Diogenes' heart.

A single shock is all that is required, pumping the serum to the brain and reigniting the psychic's mind. In a matter of seconds, the healing burgeons throughout his entire body, sealing the incision, regenerating burned muscle, mending snapped bones and melted ligaments.

He draws a breath. Another. Leaping to his feet in the trailing tatters of robes and ruined armor, he moves at once to attack. Both pistols snap out and fire in rapid succession, dozens of rounds unerring, shrieking with electrum fire as the blessings inscribed on them by Zaccheus are fulfilled.

Each bullet strikes like the hammers of God against the skulls of two of the Hounds, blasting white-smoking craters into their brains, decapitating them with explosive force. Both bodies sprawl inert and dead.

The final beast, the one wounded, leaps from its mother's side in fury, bounding toward him, spanning the chamber in a single vaulting leap, its acrid jaws stretched wide for murder.

Meeting it mid-flight, Diogenes springs forward with a psychic push, twisting and wrangling himself onto the creature's back as it crashes through the line of his men. Before it can recover from the shock to its wounded haunches, he raises his fist high, once more throbbing with terrible momentum, and plunges it into the base of the Hound's head, shattering the infernal bones and plunging his hand deep within.

Grasping, he finds the encephalon stem and snaps it off, and drives forward, through the cortex, through the cerebellum, and out through its right eye in a burst of vitreous gore. Flexing his arm, Diogenes splits the skull in half.

That task complete, he rolls to feet, brushing gobbets of brain-matter from his sleeve.

[Lawtan]

Kadia was dragged away from Rurik’s comfort. Red darkness pulled at Kadia, directed by a sting…a sear…a stabbing electric shock of pain. No feeling remained down her right arm, but spasming nerves drove signals deep into her mind. Bone cracked and muscle hewed away under the single stroke of teeth. In reflex, a rock flew at the beast’s head, to no avail. The lunging assault on her threw her to the ground. The padded shirt saved her back, but her skull smacked hard into the ground. Pulled from her sanctuary of a companion, Kadia knew intense pain…then nothing. The beast took a moment to gnaw on his prize - her arm.

------

Rurik felt the awareness through the connection fade. Rapidly he dashed towards Kadia’s fallen body. His damaged leg started to bend under the pressure and torque exerted. With a pneumatic sound, his jaw opened and closed deep around the fallen woman’s cuff. Dragging her away, however, caught the beast’s attention. The death-bastard of Sin lunged, and Rurik pulled her back with the speed of modern technology. With another crunch, the beast took part of her left leg. Rurik’s tail whipped and slammed with force against the beast. The destabilizing funnel of air grabbed at the monster’s tail, and it abandoned its prey. Kadia was bleeding profusely, but the majority of her remained with Rurik. The warping metal of his injured leg suffered further damage, as he dragged her to what he perceived as safety.

Detecting…

Friend_01 detected…

Relocating Mistress to Friend_01…

Slightly dull himself to Dante's danger, Rurik pulled Kadia towards Dante.

[Salone]

The quivering pile of blood and bone that had been Na'lsa worked its way in to the stomach of the hound. It twisted and melded, growing and rearranging itself within the pit of acid that it found itself. Splintered bone shot outward, piercing the cavern-like wall of the stomach. The mass of gore exploited the opening, tearing its way through in to the rest of the body. It began to reform as it gained mass, pressing against the organs of the hound like some sort of hellish tumor. It grew and grew, until the body could no longer contain it. Acid squeezed itself from the stomach in to the body. Blood and bile filled the empty spaces left. Still the flesh swirled, and sinewy tendrils not unlike tentacles lashed out and pierced tissue. They crept along the spinal column of the hound, rearranging nerve endings and replacing them with their own.

The hound stumbled as its nervous system began to betray itself. In mere moments a large knot began to form along the back of the creature. It grew to immense proportions, swelling upwards until it burst in a rain of blood and tissue. With the bursting Na'lsa emerged, skinless body still rebuilding itself. Sickening limbs of muscles twisted and grew to fine but strong tendrils that disappeared in to the spine of the hound, ripping apart motor control on the nerve level. It buckled as it attempted to fight against the fate that quickly approached. Na'lsa's tendrils wove even deeper in to the flesh, further up the spine and in to the skull of the hound. In to the brain, in to everything. And as he began to literally unplug the hound's brain from its own body, he laughed.

"I AM THAT WHICH WAS. THAT WHICH HAS BEEN. THAT WHICH WILL BE. I AM THE PURVEYOR OF LIFE. I AM THE FLESH WEAVER, AND YOU! HOUND OF HELL! YOU NO LONGER EXIST!"

And with a great heave, the spinal column was unseated from the hound's brain. It collapsed in to a paralyzed, useless heap of broken body. Ooze poured from the wound that Na'lsa had made. He made no rush of climbing from the gaping hole, skin and flesh retracting back in to his body to reform as a human being. Blood and fluids covering his skin coalesced and were absorbed by his pores. In every physical sense, he once again appeared...human.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Tarja stared up at the wall of the building that she had just fallen from, which help from one of the hounds. The beast was now dead and slumped half in the APC that slumped forward in its broken front suspension.

Tarja didn't know the state of the soldiers that remained in the APC. Instead she continued to glare up at the hole in the wall she and the hound had created with their exit, and through her pain, focused only on the flashes of movement that she saw in the open space. There was darkness, flashes of fire, splatter of blood.

She focused on the darkness.

Ignoring the sensations of her body, Tarja reached out with her telekinetic ability and latched onto the solid darkness she found there. Gritting her teeth, she yanked hard.

[Espy]

Perhaps I should have practiced running more.

The thought flashed through his tired mind as Dante dodged yet another ball of flame, then narrowly avoided the trampling paws of a hellhound. Sin herself seemed to be too...preoccupied, fortunately enough, but he still kept watch as he wove quickly under the bellies of the beasts.

And then all too soon, he stood in front of the Abbot. That ivory Crown was just a mere meter away.

Do I...just take it?

The question of consequences was halfway formed in his mind when something flung him bodily through the air, sending him crashing into furniture, drapes and shrouds tangled around him. Cringing through the pain, and berating himself for what the moment of hesitation had cost him, Dante regained his bearing just in time to roll past snapping jaws. He extricated himself from the curtains and splintered wood, and shot at what he could only hope was where the hound's eye lay, then tumbled forward.

The monstrosity reeled sideways and paused for just a bit, and this time it was the mercenary who had the upper hand. But the Crown was several arm's lengths out of reach, and he would never make it...

Grasping it with all the telekinetic force he could muster, he twisted around and flung it through the gaping hole in the wall.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Time crawls as the Crown streaks away through the blasted aperture in the wall. It clears the monastery, trailing white like minute rents in the span of the planes, tumbling end-over-end in a dazed milky descent.

At the same time, Father Jethro lurches upright in his bed, a jolted reaction to sudden, immanent consciousness. His eyes, manic, see everything that has transpired in the appalled chamber, but he comprehends nothing. Prolonged by disturbed enunciation, his mouth stretches in an agonized rictus, preamble to a scream, but no sound issues forth.

In fact, all sound in the chamber - the death-whines of the Hounds, Sin's guttural, sadomasochistic groans, the heave of breath in the survivors and the roar of fire - ceases. Chokes. For a pristine instant, there is silence.

And the world ripples.

Amid the carnage, possibilities collide and reality implodes, a vacuous presence emerging in a wavering black slit that wrenches outward in every direction, expanding into a sphere of crackling midnight. And within, an inferno roars, coalescing flames of argent and red-gold, straining at the walls of the natal space until it splits apart from the impossible pressure of Heaven's fire.

A Gate opens, and someone steps through.

He does not touch the monastery floor, floating aloft spared the arrogant contrivance of angelic wings, shedding refulgent trails of light from his down-turned feet. Every inch of his body is sheathed in golden armor, hammered adamant inscribed with mysterious prayers. From his crested helm spring the tri-fold horns of Zagzagel in effigy, wrought of flame-crowned bronze. His face is covered by an irenic mask of celestial dispassion, its golden perfection broken only by two abyssal pin-points where eyes might linger. A jagged halo of gray sparks and violet embers encircles his head. In his right hand, the Iron Scepter of Morning thrums like the resonance of night itself.

The Celestrine Himself has come to wage Heaven's War.

He holds the Scepter before him, and addresses the Hell-Mother.

"O alienate from God, O spirit accurst, forsaken of all good. I saw thy fall determined, and thy hapless crew involved in this perfidious fraud, contagion spread both of thy crime and punishment. Henceforth, no more be troubled how to quit the yoke of God's Messiah: those indulgent Laws will not now be vouchsafed. Other Decrees against thee are gone forth without recall..."

He ascends until he is level with Sin's rent head. Still, only the pulsating hymn of his voice of Power can be heard. Nothing else moves.

"That Golden Scepter which thou didst reject is now an Iron Rod to bruise and break thy disobedience. The wrath impendent, raging into sudden flame distinguish not: for soon expect to feel His Thunder on thy head, devouring fire. Then who created thee lamenting learn, when who can uncreate thee thou shalt know!"

Existence lurches once more, and chaos detonates across the monastery tower. A hazardous, fulgurating dome of power shines from the Scepter's tip, and Sin reels from the preying light. She quivers and gestates before the party's eyes. Her hundred wombs split open once more, belching floods of noxious amniosis and an uncountable multitude of writhing membranous birthing sacs. They strain and tear themselves open, giving birth to a seeming infinity of hellish vipers, these a dozen and more times the size of the ones they fought earlier. Millions at a time, they coil and launch themselves at the Celestrine and his corona of flaying power. The entire monastery shakes at their weight as they spring.

And they die. As though colliding head-first with a wall of lightning, the serpents are annihilated, their own momentum carrying them to ashen destruction as they plunge into the killing nexus that surrounds the Lord of Thyati'ra. Sin's children perish in impossible numbers, and each one is a knife of agony in her spirit. She trembles and claws at herself, rips out her own organs in insane protest and denial, crushes her many hearts in hands of helpless maternal rage.

And the Celestrine is not yet done.

Floating even nearer, he raises the terrible Scepter and brings it down upon her skull.

Like the fist of God himself.

And again.

Again.

Again.

Sin howls. Thrashes. A hostage to her own immortality. Her unholy Father could not be slain, but the wounds of Michael's sword have laid him low. An Empyrean scourging. And as was done to the Father, the Celestrine does now to the Daughter. Essential things crack and splinter with each blow, that monstrous skull further ruined by savage smitings that she is powerless to ward. Furrows are gouged through her gangrenous brain, charred eternities of anguish that will forever burn through spiritual synapses. The Sentence of Hell is renewed at his hand.

And to the astonished group, even as he sets about his judgment, Zaccheus speaks but a single word:

"BEGONE."