FLAP! The devil expanded his wings, spinning mid-air and landing feet-first on the skeletal hell gate, growling as his face healed. “Damned wizard,” He glared at Merlin with rage, “I will decorate my throne with your skin!”
STAB! As the devil stared forward with rage, he felt a sharp pain in his back. He turned to see Jack smiling, stabbing him with a wakizashi. “You bastard!” He growled, feeling his insides burn as the blade glowed.
CRACK! Jack pushed the wakizashi deeper into the devil’s back, “There is a shred of holy magic in this blade. Wonder if it hurts.”
The devil grunted. The magic was weak but potent. He could instantly recognize the symbol carved into the blade’s leather handle. The blazing sun of the east, the inevitable eclipse of the end.
The symbol of the goddess of the Dusk and down. The red sun, and the eclipse, Amaterasu. “The lady’s foster mother, to this I wouldn’t fall, never!” He growled, grabbing Jack by the neck and jumping into the hell gate.
“Take the contract if you want a chance of saving him!” The devil smiled.
“JACK!” Lydia shouted.
BAM! Nina lunged forward as fast as she could before the gate closed, but she was late, barely putting her fingers between the iron doors. CLANK! As the gate slammed shut, Nina growled, pushing against it, trying to force it open with all her might.
Merlin grunted, “Damn it, he took him.” she pointed her wand at the gate.
“What was that idiot thinking of?” Ginger growled, “Open it again!” She glared at Merlin.
“I’m trying!” Merlin cried, “The goddess of magic isn’t answering! That bitch must be finding this amusing!” No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t muster holy magic again to open the gate.
GRWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Nina screamed as the veins on her arms bulged. The gate crackled, its metal growling as Nina put pressure.
Merlin and Ginger stared at Nina with terrified smiles on their faces as they saw the gate slowly open, “That’s a hell gate. Are you serious?” Ginger giggled.
Merlin pointed her wand at the crack, “Hold still! I will pull Jack the moment I see him!”
GRAWWAAAAAAAA! Nina roared, applying even more force at the gate, forcing it halfway open.
BAM! BAM! Lydia rushed forward, her blade burning with a divine flare, “Give Jack back!” She screamed, jumping over Nina’s head and squeezing into the gate.
“Another idiot?” Ginger cried, “Arad, don’t let more of them jump. I will bring those two back…” She turned around, only to see him missing.
****
SWOSH! As Lydia jumped into hell, she could feel the putrid, charged smell assault her senses. The pure heat and acidic air burned her throat and skin as her hair and armor started catching fire.
She blinked as her eyes started burning with acid, seeing the scope of the first layer of the hells. It was infinite, bare mountains of sold stones, fire, brimstone, and acid lakes with lightning crackling in the red sky above.
The gate spawned in the middle of the sky, and she had already started falling toward the ground. Hordes of imps flew toward her with hunger and rage in their claws.
Lydia’s golden glowing eyes flashed as she located Jack and the devil falling below her. Holy magic ignited her blade as she swung at the imps, “Get out of the way!” [Divine Smite]
With a brilliant flash, the small imps turned into ash as Lydia fell after the devil and Jack, swinging her burning sword.
PIKYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! The devil screamed an ear-shattering screech boomed in the hells as he looked up at the paladin falling at him with a swing.
“Should have killed me,” A voice came from beneath the devil, sending shivers down his spine. As he stared, Jack glared at him with the hell ground approaching.
Thud! Jack grabbed the devil by the neck and stabbed his chest with the wakizashi, “Half-assing it won’t get you anywhere,” Jack smiled. 𝐞𝗻𝐨𝘃𝗹.𝐜𝐨𝗺
“You abominable monster!” The devil growled, glaring at Jack with terror.
[Divine Cleaver] Lydia swung her sword down at the devil’s neck, barely wounding him before his tail slapped her away.
BLAH! Lydia coughed blood, falling at the imps chasing her, aiming to eat her corpse after she fell to her death.
The devil spun in his place, kicking Jack toward the ground with an angry frown, “Die, mortal.” He smiled, “With the pride of scaring a devil, you achieved more than the other worms of the outer world.”
The devil lifted his hands, expanding his arms, “Forces of hell, devour those two souls and bring me their rotted bones!” He shouted, and the thousands of imps inhabiting the layer heeded his command, swarming the place.
SWOSH! As Aella was falling, a black shadow flew and caught her, and soon, that shadow snatched Jack and landed on a nearby hill.
The imps stopped. Their bones shook as they saw the massive black dragon glaring at them, bringing bad memories of the past.
Arad expanded his wings, roaring with his jaws open. The hell ground sharted shaking as the devil growled.
“What a fool, you chose death over life?” The devil stared at Arad with a smile.
As Arad roared, black tattoos covered his already dark scales, and a blue orb started forming between his teeth. ^[Breath, roar! If we’re going to die anyway, let’s make it count!]^
Doma started using every trick she knew, bending Arad’s void magic to pull the hell ground into the breath, crushing it to charge the coming blast.
The devil couldn’t feel any powerful magic coming from Arad’s breath, but there was an immense sense of danger feeling his bones. A cornered dragon, his last flash of life, nothing good will come from it.
The devil formed a shield of fire. Turning his back to Arad to run didn’t seem like a wise option.
Doma smiled inside Arad, “[Me and my darling’s most powerful magic.]” Her eyes flashed purple, “[[Fuck Everything In That General Direction!]]” She didn’t have time or energy to think of a name, so she shouted in anger, enraged at the devil and the hells.
The matter crumbled in Arad’s jaws as the void got sapped out, releasing a beam of blue light, flashing toward the devil in a brilliant light.
The devil’s vision went white for a second, and then black as the breath erased him, and blasted a chunk of a faraway mountain.
The beam traveled further, hitting a jet-black iron fortress, quaking its walls.
****
Inside the black iron fortress, in the innermost chamber. A titanic, twenty-headed drakaina woke up from her slumber, standing up as the devils swarming her hall cried.
Her head wiggled like snakes, “Who dares knock on my doors?” She growled, taking a deep whiff. “I see, the void kid.” She smiled, “And a nice meal,”
BAM! Her massive body disappeared.
****
As the massive drakaina flew to Arad’s location, she saw one of the mountains cut in half and hordes upon hordes of dead devils. “Did he do all of this?” She looked at Arad, seeing a sea of blood as a barbarian woman swung her battle axe through hordes of devils, ripping them to shreds as she screamed.
****
A few seconds earlier, Nina mustered all of her strength to open the hell gate and jumped after Lydia and Jack, summoning her axe at the last moment.
When she fell into hell, she only saw a decimated battlefield. A mountain has been cut in half in the distance, and imps feel dead from the sky like flies.
BAM! She landed beside Arad and stared at him, he looked as dead as he could get, but there was still a whiff of necrotic magic in his body. His vampirism is holding his body together.
Calling upon her previous battles against vampires, Nina sighed in relief, “He should survive with some blood,” She grabbed her axe, cutting her wrist and dripping blood in Arad’s mouth.
As she did so, more devils swarmed. This was Hell. Expecting a moment of peace is too much to ask.
Nina picked up her axe and roared, raging once more as she lunged at the swarming devils.
As she hacked and slashed hordes upon hordes, the devil’s body emerged from the ground, rising to the sky with a smile on his face.
“Fools! Fools!” He laughed, “Hell has its laws,” He expanded his wings, radiating curse magic.
This was hell, a place of suffering. No matter how much its inhabitants die of torture, they always come back to life to suffer more. Devils abuse this power by pulling fights to hell where they can’t be killed.
“You fight me on my land, fools. Your death shall be grand!” He conjured his trident.
Nina growled. She knew that she couldn’t win here. It’s an endless fight. Could she hold until Merlin manages to open the gate again?
“No more deals, it’s over!” The devil smiled, “He’s in my grasp. I shall raise him as a dracolich pet, serving me for eternity.” The devil laughed, “I made the right move, at the right time.”
BAM! As the devil laughed, a massive drakaina landed behind him, “Your land?” She growled, and the devil froze in his place.
“No…I didn’t…” He cried, but she didn’t allow him time, swallowing him with a single bite.
Nina froze. The drakaina’s claws were as large as mountains. She stood above else, radiating magic like nothing else. Everything beside her looked so pale it became meaningless.
“This had gotten out of claws,” The massive drakaina growled, “In hells, none shall touch you if you prayed to my name.” She expanded her wings, flying without flapping them. “No more deals, it’s over! A greater fate awaits you, void born.”
BAM! She disappeared, and Nina sighed, seeing the devils fly away.
She walked toward Arad, seeing him stable. The hell flame and acid have stopped harming them as well. There was a single dragon who could do this. Even Nina wasn’t ignorant enough not to recognize her.
“Tiamat,” She growled, sitting beside Arad and looking at the sky. “She resides here after all,”
CLACK! A massive red gate opened, and Sena walked in, looking around, “Nina! Arad!” She shouted, her eyes quickly spotting them.
“We’re here,” Nina waved her arm, exhausted.
“It appears she arrived in time,” Sena sighed in relief, but then stared at Nina, “Ahem, I mean, I arrived in time,”
“Let’s get out. I will help you get Arad’s metal.”
Nina looked at her, “We just fought a devil,”
Sena tilted her head, extending her palms toward them. [Telekinesis]
Arad, Nina, Lydia, and Jack levitated as Sena waved her palm, throwing them through the massive gate she opened.
Sena took a deep breath, staring at the hell sky. “I know you’re there,” She smiled.
ZON! The sky shifted as Tiamat showed herself again, floating down. She didn’t leave but merely used her camouflage.
“You picked a powerful one,” Tiamat growled, glaring at her.
Sena stared at her, “Aunt Alice didn’t send that bastard, did she?” She growled.
Tiamat scratched the chin of her red dragon head, looking back at the mountain, “I don’t believe so. She won’t act like this,”
“Then who was it? Don’t tell me that fool acted alone?” Sena growled.
Tiamat got her face closer to Sena, “This kid has a lot of potential. And you know how powerful people would react.”
Sena looked down, “They will either try to enslave him to control his power. Or kill him before he gets out of hand.”
“That’s true,” Tiamat growled, “Powerful people aren’t stupid. They won’t send weaker minions to him and make him stronger. They will attack at the first chance with all their might.”
“Then what do you suggest I do?” Sena sighed.
Tiamat smiled, “If you want him, then take him,” She looked closer at Sena’s face. “You must compromise with how weak he’s now,”
Sena looked away, “Don’t want to,” She approached the hell gate, “You don’t have any right to tell me that. I won’t accept someone weaker than myself.”