Dantega:Volume 7 Chapter 9
(PART 6)
Heinrich Zimmer has made his way to the Queen’s suite of the Trojan castle and firmly knocks on the door. In the room on the other side is Satan, the man throwing the world into chaos with every breath he takes.
Heinrich isn’t nervous, not even when the door opens by itself and allows him to enter; he isn’t one to have jitters or feel that peculiar squeeze on the heart that occurs when one’s safety is on the line. He’s completely indifferent to whatever situations that might cause that because he simply doesn’t feel anything in general.
Through intense training, he has numbed his body and his senses so greatly that even if he were drowning deep in the ocean, he’d have the ability to rationally maneuver his way to the surface without panicking.
He’s that kind of an emotionless man.
And only that kind of man could stand face to face with someone like Satan and blatantly deceive him without being noticed.
Upon entering, he finds that Satan isn’t in the room, and Heinrich doesn’t even feel his presence.
“..?”
At least until Satan’s voice is heard from outside saying, “It’s a nice day, why don’t you come join me?”
Heinrich doesn’t answer and instead walks out to the balcony; once there he finds that Satan isn’t here either.
“I’m up here.” Satan’s voice rang from above.
Heinrich looks up to the very tip of the castle and spots Satan sitting at the base of a cap-house leading to what once held the Trojan flag. Now, waving in the wind in its place is a red, white, and black flag with a pentagram.
“I’d like to speak to you.” Heinrich says, looking up at the villain almost another hundred feet above him.
“Then come up here and speak to me.”
Heinrich looks around and comes to the quick realization that there’s almost no chance he could climb that high without falling to his death; so instead he just shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. He wants to part of climbing up there, even if Satan told him to.
But to be honest, Heinrich would actually attempt to scale the sheer walls of the castle if it were anyone else that ordered him to, but by defying Satan, it shows that he’s not just some dog who’ll follow any order that doesn’t benefit both parties.
Satan chuckles at the kind of person he’s accepted as his right hand man and says, “Fine then, I’ll help you.”
He then holds out his hand, and in that one little motion, Heinrich starts to levitate all the way up the castle and is dropped off right at Satan’s side.
Heinrich grabs on to the roof of the cap-house and places his feet on the very small creasing at the bottom; looking down, he can clearly see that one misstep and he’ll fall straight off the entire castle and to his death.
To anyone else, this alone would be intimidating, but add on to the fact that he’s up here with a monster like Satan, it’s almost enough to have a mental breakdown.
This would be like being trapped in a pitfall with no one there to help, and then having two Bengal tigers come in from a secret entrance and having the door shut behind them. If the escape wasn’t impossible enough, you’d know for sure who’s going to be eaten in that group.
However, Heinrich, not phased in the least by the height on which he stands, or the person he’s sharing this with, sends a glare into Satan’s back and asks, “What are you doing up here?”
“What, can I not enjoy the view of my own city?”
Heinrich sighs.
Sure the view is gorgeous, there are snow-capped mountains as far as the eye can see and the way the sun reflects off the green conifer trees and grass is stunning, but now is not the time for sarcasm, with so many other things on his mind he’d rather not beat around the bush.
“Of course you can, but you’re not the type of person who cares about stuff like that.”
“Oh? You think you know me that well huh?”
“You’re evil, what else is there to know? Marveling at pretty mountains doesn’t do you any good, you’re up here for a specific reason, and I’d like to hear what for.”
Satan laughs rather loudly before replying, “My fair servant, curiosity can kill you.”
“So can lack of knowledge.”
Satan pauses for a moment and then shrugs his shoulders as if resigning to the persistence of Heinrich.
He looks out to the skyline and says, “Do you know how many citizens there are in this city?”
“651,457... Though that number has gone down a bit since Sturgess’s coup along with the number of people we have drafted since the war started.”
“And how many people have we taken here?”
“32,087.”
Satan folds is arms and chuckles a little when he says, “You really do have a photographic memory… Very impressive.” He then leans back against the cap-house of the castle and finishes, “That little of a number won’t be nearly enough to raise the rest of my army.”
“The people we drafted you mean?”
“No, I mean the entire population of the Capital.”
Heinrich is surprised, he refuses to show it, but he is certainly worried that Satan intends to take the souls of every last resident of the Capital; this sends his mind racing into the many different scenarios on which he could pull such a thing off.
But what Satan says next makes his thoughts take a sharp turn to the left.
“We need millions.”
“.....”
“And that’s where those 32,000 draftees come in.”
Heinrich’s fighting back a cold sweat as he waits for an explanation.
“If we are going to take millions of souls, we need to kill off even more than just those who still oppose me. WORLD’s army may be large, but even if I sacrificed all of their souls, it wouldn’t be enough to bring out my entire army. That is why I decided to ignore them and go for the larger, defenseless target.”
“...Ignore the army of WORLD?”
“Well I can’t say I’m ignoring them, I’m more or less just having my demons engage them, all the while keeping them separated from my true soldiers.”
“I don’t get it, I was under the impression that the soldiers you were able to summon from Hell were specifically here to take over the countries that refuse to obey you.”
“No, the ones I was able to bring to the surface are weak, and because they were weak they were easy to break through the dimension between Hell and Earth; it’s the strongest demons I wish to bring here, and when they arrive there is simply no way that the humans can stop us. We’ll be able to oppose Heaven with my strongest men, what we have now is barely enough to oppose WORLD.”
Heinrich knows he can’t let that happen, at all costs he absolutely can’t let Satan gather enough souls to bring about such strength. He had no idea that the demons present here in Troy and around the world are such weaklings, he can’t believe that such a small portion of weak soldiers can wreak such havoc; he shivers at the thought of greater numbers of demons with greater strength.
“So how? How can we bring them here?” Heinrich asks, masking his true intentions with words that sound like he wishes to be part of the plan.
“Those humans you drafted, did you think that I’d actually have them fight for me?” Satan chuckles a little as he continues. “You didn’t actually think that they’d be able to make a difference?”
Of course Heinrich thought that, Satan made it clear when he took over that he wanted humans to join him, he even threatened them with death if they didn’t comply. So this is all news to him, all he can do is stay silent as the Devil explains.
“We tried that once, and we had billions of them on our side, and even with weapons of mass destruction that the people of your day and age couldn’t even fathom, they weren’t strong enough to truly tip the scales in our favor.”
“Then why..?”
“It’s simple, I’m going to make them strong.”
“..?”
Satan gestures out to city and says, “Take a look.”
Heinrich shifts his sight to where Satan is pointing and sees something that he didn’t just moments earlier.
Out in the distance are red pillars stretching hundreds of stories high into the sky, they stretch so far upwards that they disappear into the clouds. As he scours the skyline of the city he notices that there are 5 of these pillars, each one miles apart from each other and they surround the castle as though they were guarding the center of the city.
And upon looking closely, he notices little black figures flying to and fro around the pillars, dropping off little balls of light that swirl around and enter the pillars.
He can’t believe he hasn’t noticed them at all until just now, they obviously didn’t just show up out of the blue, they must’ve been there for a while.
“If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to see them, it’s because I haven’t allowed you to see them. Those five pillars are the key to winning this war; I can’t afford to have them discovered so I’ve kept them hidden from human sight. I didn’t trust you enough to show you either, but now is as good a time as any for you to find out how I’m going to go about taking over this world.”
Heinrich is fighting back a heart-pounding nervousness when he asks, “What are they for?”
“It’s a multitude of things really; first and foremost, they are used to gather the souls I’ve taken from around the world so that I can raise my army. And they are satellites for my power to be distributed to those I wish to give strength to. And lastly, they are the factories that create the vessels I need to do both. From those five points, they are my path to victory.”
If one looked from high above the city, they'd see that those five pillars are the points to the star of the pentagram. In essence, it is one giant seal used to gather souls and break the dimension between the Earth, Heaven and Hell. Satan has made this city into the battlefield for the future fight against Heaven.
If what he says is true, those five pillars that surround the city are the path to WORLD’s victory as well.
Heinrich doesn’t know the details, but he has gathered enough information to know that those pillars must be destroyed if humanity wants to win, if anything, he simplifies their next objective and narrows the distance of victory to 5 points that are right in front of them, right in the Capital of Troy.
But, he needs to know one more thing to truly grasp it all, so unhesitatingly, he asks, “Those five pillars… They are where the draftees are taken after I’m done with them correct?”
“Well done my fair servant, that is correct.”
“And those vessels that you speak of...”
“Those vessels are the humans you brought to me. Human bodies are the easiest to manipulate, and like a conductive piece of electrical wire, they are the easiest to send my powers to.”
“And what of their souls?”
“They are sacrificed for the sake of my army, and replaced by my will. I send orders to them from here, and they do as I wish.”
That’s a chilling declaration, what he’s saying is that he takes their souls away and swaps it out with a portion of his power, which in turn makes them lifeless dolls that can be used as nearly indestructible weapons. But what really stuns Heinrich is the scale on which he’s manipulating them, over 32,000 people and counting. He’s sending his power to every last one of them, and they’re moving to his whim as though they had a life of their own.
He wonders just how strong he has to be to do something like that.
He shakes off his amazement and pauses before asking the final question that has been squeezing at him since this conversation started.
“So what are you having them do?”
“That should be obvious…” Satan replies with a thin grin. “They are going to attack WORLD’s Capitals.”
Ash is walking along the streets of the Capital with 10 gatherers, and as they walk she is trying to match her steps with theirs as to not stand out. She’s certain that the gatherers wouldn’t notice, but there are demons walking along the streets as well, and they all seem to shoot her and the group vicious glares as they pass.
It’s as though they resent the men clad in black.
(What's their problem?) Ash thinks to herself as she feels the glares of the demons, trying not to be affected by it.
She has a hard time not feeling frightened by them, the last encounter with them almost cost her her life had Heinrich not showed up; so without that blanket of security she can’t help but feel nervous.
Focused on that feeling, she doesn’t notice that all the gatherers have stopped and she almost walks into the one in front of her; it’s only now does she see what the sudden halt was for.
Standing in front of her and the others in the middle of the road are three demon soldiers, armed with rifles they block their path as though she and the others were enemies.
(Huh..?)
Ash can’t help but wonder why they're keeping them from advancing.
“Hey, just what the fuck are these guys anyways?” The demon in the middle says, answering Ash’s question perfectly.
It’s just as Heinrich thought, no one knows of the identities of these things either, Heinrich had to assault one to find out, and if someone like him can be curious to the point of using violence, ill-tempered demons certainly are as well.
And therein lies the problem, without Heinrich around, the demons occupying the streets get unruly and restless. They already hate the Chameleon for the fact that as a human, he’s Satan’s right hand man, with him not here they can take it out on the cronies that follow him around.
“They ain’t demons that’s for sure. I’m getting a mixed scent of human and Satan, it’s really buggin' the shit out of me.” Another one answered.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Without even flinching, the demon leading the pack points his weapon at the leading gatherer and pulls the trigger.
BANG!!
Ash’s shoulders jumped at the sudden noise and she really hopes no one noticed it.
The gatherer looks as though it is about to topple to the ground but catches itself and stands back astute, facing towards the three as though nothing had even happened.
“What the fuck!?”
Naturally, they’re shocked.
And so is Ash for that matter, being shot at point blank range square in the face should’ve have killed it instantly.
“Seriously, this ain’t funny...”
The demon pokes at the gatherer with the tip of his gun as the others take weary steps back, it’s like poking at a captive beast that has been trained to perform tricks at a circus, it may be docile while on stage, but sooner or later it’s instincts would kick in if agitated to a certain extent.
“Relax.” Said the one poking at the gatherer. “These guys won’t do anything contrary to what that bastard Heinrich orders them.”
“But you just shot it and it’s still alive, I don’t think messing with it anymore is a good idea.”
“Like I said, they aren’t gonna do shit unless--- bgffff!?”
In a flash, the demon’s face is viciously grabbed by the gatherer and is being squeezed so hard that his eyes start to pop out of his head.
“!!” “!?”
The other two don’t know what to do at first, but upon seeing their comrade’s feet leave the ground and watching the life literally squeezed out of him, they both rush to his aid.
But the two are stopped by a few other gatherers and are grabbed.
The next scene that unfolds is pure gore.
The gatherers’ strength is so great that with the slightest pull of the demon’s limbs, send them flying off their bodies in a storm of blood. It didn’t take more than a second until only their torsos are left and their lifeless frames are tossed aside in a puddle of red liquid.
The last surviving demon whose face is being grabbed, screams into the hand that’s crushing his head. An inaudible noise is muffled against the gatherers palm, and the horrid sound goes unnoticed by the monster in black.
Blood screams out of the demon’s ears and like squeezing onto a soft rubber ball, the demon’s head mushes in between the gatherers’ fingers until it finally loses any kind of form and separates itself from the rest of his body.
Ash desperately tries to control her breathing upon witnessing such a heinous sight, and when she notices that the other demon soldiers along the streets of Troy who were once throwing dirty looks their way begin to run off, she truly understands how frightening these monsters in black are.
It’s similar to how humans are afraid of being eaten by sharks, and those sharks are afraid to be eaten by larger sharks. It’s a cycle of strength that only now has been realized by both parties. Whatever these monsters are, they are not to be messed with.
As though the vicious scene that just unfolded never happened, the ten gatherers begin walking once more, and Ash is forced to follow them to their designated destinations.
And after a couple blocks worth of a walk, they reach a residential area of the city and all go off in different directions.
(Huh??)
Left alone and clueless, Ash just stands there and watches as they barge into houses and begin pulling people out into the street one by one.
The citizens scream and beg, but the shut ears of the gatherers don’t open up to the voices pleading for mercy; they simply toss them towards Ash and go on to the next home. The citizens who try to flee are quickly caught and put back into place, the formation of the gatherers make escape impossible due to the fact that they have encircled them in every direction, and standing next to the hopeless people is Ash, in the center of it all watching in horror.
She thought that the deaths of those demons was horrible enough, but to her, this is much worse. These are her people after all; her people are suffering right in front of her eyes and there’s nothing she can do about it.
She’s struggling mightily to keep herself planted in position and not do anything rash, but it only gets harder when a man who was just tossed next to her, crawls on his hands and knees and grabs onto Ash’s black robe.
He looks up to her with more fear in his eyes than she’s ever seen and begins to beg her.
“P-Please don’t do this! I have a family! Please! I can’t leave them, don’t let them take me away! Don’t let them take me away!!”
His voice was cracked with despair and that terrible tone wasn’t lost on her. She begins to tear up as she stands there and watches the form of pure desperation reveal itself to her. Her hands begin to shake, her breathing becomes shoddy, and her overall appearance as a ruthless gatherer begins to deteriorate in a brilliant fashion.
She’s about to reach out to help him when
“Huaagghh!?”
The man’s throat is lassoed by a rope and his body is viciously yanked away from her and back towards the others who have been taken.
It’s only now that she notices that the others are bound in a similar fashion as though they were cattle rounded up to be moved.
There’s 20 of them, most of them men and a couple women, they are all bound by rope and are in the process of being tied to each other by the gatherers.
She dearly hopes that there’s no more victims, and when all the monsters in black form a circle around the tied up citizens and begin walking, she can tell that these are the only people who were unlucky enough to be drafted.
She finds it odd that there isn’t more, she has heard stories of Heinrich taking hundreds of people at a time on a daily basis, so only 20 comes as about as much of a relief as such an awful situation could offer. Heinrich likely ordered such a small number solely to keep the sacrifices as low as possible with her present without being suspicious, and despite her damaged mindset at the moment she still finds it in her heart to be grateful to him for that.
But still, the sobbing noises and the tears of her fellow Trojans as they are pulled along like cattle pains her to her very core. And also, being one of the monsters responsible for their captivity is almost enough to break her; even though she didn’t personally grab anyone out of their homes, she’s accompanying the ones who did, and did nothing to stop them. She’s just as guilty by association alone.
She’s certain that whatever they’re going to do to the draftees, she’s going to have to bear the regret of their fates for the rest of her life.
For now she just hopes that they’ll be instated into Hell’s army, that way they will at least keep their lives.
After a mile or so of a walk, they reach an unfamiliar building in the corner of the Capital. It’s tall, very very tall, so tall that it hurts her neck to look up high enough to catch sight of this large red building rising into the clouds.
(...!!)
This is the first time she’s ever seen this structure, and she is astonished at the fact that she hasn’t noticed this until now.
She looks to the captives and fully expects to see them just as shocked as she is, but is surprised to find that they aren’t. It’s as though they can’t see it at all, and are simply being led to the basic three story building at the very base of this massive structure.
There’s a sickening feeling brewing in her chest as they all make their way inside. As soon as they enter, the door shuts behind them in a loud bang and the next thing she knows, she’s in the pitch black of an eerily silent room.
(Is this really the recruitment center..?)
This is far from what she had imagined it; she fully expected to see a legion of demons leading whoever was drafted to the army’s barracks to begin training; at least that’s how Troy’s military works. The one’s drafted have a set time to report to their local military base to fill out paperwork and get handed down an enlistment form. From there they are sent to wherever location the higher-ups of the military deemed fit for those unwilling to fight; most of the time they end up doing grunt work, and are then thrown into whatever military conflict comes next.
Yet here there’s no one, not even a light shining in this so called recruitment center. It’s as though they have led these poor people into a prison cell where they await execution.
This feeling weighs heavily on her as her nerves begin to uncontrollably shake in lieu of such dreadful thoughts.
After a brief moment of hearing confused sobbing from the captives, she then hears the scuffling of feet followed by gurgled screams and moans of panic.
Hearing such noises directly in front of her and not knowing how to respond to them freezes her as her ears try to paint a picture in her mind of what’s occurring in front of her.
(W-What are they doing to them!?)
BOMMM!
A deep loud noise assaults her eardrums and interrupts her rapid thoughts, the source of that sound causes her to slam her eyes shut.
A very bright light turned on and temporarily dazed her; upon opening them, she sees that the twenty people gathered in the days draft are no longer standing there.
They are hanging from their necks above her head, the ropes tied menacingly to hooks connected to a moving belt as though they were clothes in a dry cleaner. From there, the pole begins moving back and away from her and towards what looks to be a conveyor belt connected to an assembly line in a car manufacturing plant.
They struggle for air and grasp at the ropes suffocating them, their feet dangle in panic as the gatherers look on without any shred of remorse.
(!!!)
Ash can’t believe what her eyes are cursed to see, this building isn’t a recruitment area at all, it’s more or less a butchery. Stretching deep into this room she’s found herself in, are even more assembly lines making their way up so high it’s like a never ending staircase.
And standing near each line like shadows are hundreds of gatherers, and just like statues, they don’t move. That is, until the 20 people being strangled by the rope and pulled along the conveyor belt make their way to them and stop. This is when a couple monsters in black pull a red hot branding iron out of a furnace hole connected to the wall and lift it towards the poor humans.
In a robotic fashion, they push the branding irons against the chests of the dangling men and women one by one, and if their throats weren’t so constricted, they would certainly be screaming in agony.
With a sound similar to throwing a piece of steak on a scorching hot grill, the brand seers their skin until their bodies are embroidered with the mark left by the searing metal.
It is a brand of the pentagram.
And as soon as the deed is done, a bright orb is seen rushing out of their body and flies upwards, deep towards the roof of this seemingly never ending building until they disappear out of sight.
Once all 20 of the captives have been branded, the hooks carrying them like a dry-cleaning shop begins to move once more, this time to the left towards the wall. It slides into a room and all twenty of them vanish into the structure.
Ash’s knees are shaking, she’s seen those orbs before during the Trojan rebellion, it was there that she saw Satan take them into his person and unleash a portion of his army. She may be in shock, but she can accurately gather what those orbs are and what they will be used for.
It’s what the leftover bodies turn into that really shocks her.
From a door up above on a separate conveyor belt, comes the twenty people just branded, only now they are halfway dressed in an all black robe. The belt goes to the other side of the building where more gatherers await them, when they stop, the gatherers untie the rope around their throats and they drop down to their feet; as if putting on the finishing touches to a delicate wedding cake, the gathers throw those imposing black hoods over their heads.
The once dangling men and women taken in the day’s draft begin to move once again; this time, following the rest of their newly formed comrades through the door in the wall that leads deeper into this production plant disguised as a recruitment center.
Ash’s shaky knees finally give way and she begins to fall to the ground.
She is astonished and horrified at the result of witnessing such a hell firsthand; horrified at the thought that she contributed to such a thing, and so greatly disturbed to find out how these gatherers are made that it makes her nauseous.
She doesn’t know the exact number, but she knows that tens of thousands of Trojan citizens have been taken from their homes; and that means that tens of thousands of people have been sacrificed and turned into monsters against their wills.
Unaware of the true evil intentions behind all this before now, she had no clue what kind of war she was fighting in, or what kind of enemy she was up against, what kind death she and the rest of humanity faces.
She may be a soldier, but she’s still a teenage girl, she can’t look at such a sight and not be affected negatively by it.
She may be a soldier, but she’s still human.
Humans can’t witness such a sight and not feel true fear.
There’s no way any human can.
Only a second from falling to the ground and blowing her cover, she is caught by someone from behind and pulled back up to her wobbly feet.
She doesn’t even have the presence of mind to turn and look who it is, but deep down she knows.
“I guess I shouldn’t have sent you here, I wasn’t expecting Satan to come right out and tell me so easily.”
Said Heinrich while holding onto this poor girl’s shaking shoulders.
He leads Ash out of the recruitment center doors without any of the gatherers noticing and out into the daylight of the Trojan city. The heavy air contaminated with the pressure of death that once bore down so mightily upon her senses is left behind in the horrendous building.
While pulling the silent and visibly shaken Captain along the side of the road, Heinrich continues to speak. “As it turns out, we have some good news.”
Ash’s shoulders jolted upon hearing ‘good news’ come out of his mouth.
“I’ve found out what Satan’s plans are, and if we go about this the right way I think we now have a better chance at stopping him.” Heinrich pulls her into an alleyway used as a shortcut to the castle and continues. “There are five more of those recruitment centers doubling as a plant to harvest souls and create soldiers, if we can find a way to destroy them, the rest of Satan’s army can’t rise and those monsters in black can no longer be made from the drafted citizens of Troy.”
“.....”
“I’m sure you figured out their identities after seeing that. Those men in black aren’t gatherers, their just soulless bodies under the influence of Satan’s will, and because of that they're much stronger than your average demon.”
The alleyway gets more narrow the deeper they go and have to turn to the side to avoid walking into garbage bins and electrical boxes.
But Heinrich keeps his gaze forward as he presses on.
“He’s sending the ‘Soulless’ to WORLD’s Capitals and using them to steal the souls of all they come across, but what he doesn’t know is that our Capitals are virtually defenseless due to the invasion of Troy. I don’t like our odds of survival if they reach our more populated areas and begin wiping us out in mass numbers, it won’t be long until the full force of Satan’s army makes its way onto our soil. But if we can destroy those five buildings, Satan’s connection with the Soulless would be cut off and essentially deal a bigger blow to him than all of WORLD’s forces simultaneously converging on Troy’s Capital like originally planned.”
He’s heard enough to deduce that WORLD and Hell are in a virtual race against each other; but if he can destroy those pillars and disconnect Satan’s power from the Soulless, that would guarantee that WORLD would win that race.
“...How..?” Ash mumbled, her voice barely exited the black hood she’s wearing over her head.
“How? Well, that’s the tricky part, I don’t know if you noticed, but the buildings of the recruitment centers aren’t what they seem. You see, they’re actually massive pillars that stretch hundreds of meters into the sky----“
“That’s not what I mean!!”
The two stop and Ash quickly throws her arm out of his grip.
“How can you do this!?”
Heinrich looks genuinely confused when he asks, “Do what?”
“You know what I’m talking about! Those people in black, how can you know what you’ve done and not feel anything!!? How could you do it and live with yourself!?”
She had thought that no human could see such a thing and not be affected, she had thought that no human could contribute to such tragedy and not suffer as a result. She had thought no human can overlook such a thing until she heard Heinrich speak as if their deaths were nothing. He spoke as though he doesn't even feel at all.
“Well...” Heinrich said with a sigh. “What other choice do I have?”
“..!!”
“What it comes down to is whether the job needed to be done or not. And of course, I found it necessary to follow orders from Satan that directly led to the death of over 32,000 people, and now that I know what they’re used for, I’m pretty sure that number has multiplied tenfold, if not even more.”
“All those people, you spit out those numbers like they’re nothing! How could you be so heartless!?”
Heinrich’s lackadaisical expression turns stiff and his overall complexion grows stern when he answers, “Because I chose to be.”
“...What?”
“I can’t control what Satan wants me to do, but I can control how I react to it.” Heinrich takes an imposing step towards Ash and she instinctively backs up as he inches closer. “I have two choices. I can either choose to let the atrocities I commit affect me; which would in turn, effect the outcome of humanity as a whole, or I can choose to destroy those feelings before they can ever brew in my chest and fulfill my job as a soldier who fights for humanity’s future.”
“I won’t let you simplify this to the point that it’s just a right or a wrong choice! You’re killing humans to protect humans?? Are you kidding me!? There aren’t just two options on whether to sacrifice lives or not, there shouldn’t be any at all!”
Ash takes off her hood and starts swinging it at Heinrich, hitting him in the chest and face with each strike.
He doesn’t even flinch as he takes the pounding.
That is, until he grabs Ash’s arm and looks her square in the eyes. “You’re right… It’s impossible to see the world through the set projections of absolutes; there isn’t an absolute way to go about sacrificing people for the greater good of everyone else, and there isn’t an absolute way to not do it. There’s only other influences altering those absolutes and bending them into a shape where you’re no longer left with a way out.”
“.....”
“I know you can see the influences shaping my decisions, so you should know why I am able to be such a heartless monster.”
He let’s go of her hand and walks away from her; he doesn’t turn his head nor leave her with a parting hand gesture, he simply walks towards the exit of the alleyway and leaves her behind in the dust-bowl of her own emotions.
“Where are you going..?”
“I’m going to do something about the other influences forcing me into heinous acts.”
“What about me?”
“You?” Heinrich stops walking and turns to her, he then shows her a face that she can’t believe he’s wearing.
Heinrich is smiling, a warm and tenderhearted smile that makes no sense to her whatsoever.
Caught in that heart stopping wave of warmth, Ash gazes upon his smiling face when he says,
“You can do whatever ‘you’ feel is right. Unlike me, you still have a choice.”
He leaves her behind and she’s stopped dead in her tracks, it takes a few seconds to snap out of it and she gives chase to him. Once out of the alleyway, she finds that he is gone, and to the right of her is the castle of Troy.
To the left is the life she once knew as a regular girl, and to the right of her is a life of tragedy and death.
She has a choice.
She can go home, or she can face the truth behind this world and choose to oppose it.
Projected in front of her are two options leading to a multitude of different absolutes. One of which she could live out the rest of her days in peace, just hoping that those fighting for her future will prevail, the other is one where she can fight, one where her last sight could be a pair of hateful eyes as she dies.
Yet none of that is guaranteed, both options could lead to the same result in an almost infinite number of different ways.
She can’t control that.
She can only control what she is willing to do to grasp on to hope. Be that for herself or others, she can choose to go about creating that in a fashion completely different from the other.
“What should I do?”
It would seem that now she realizes how heavy the weight of multiple options are. However, she thinks it’d be much worse if they were all taken away from her and she’s forced to do something she doesn’t want.
And it hits her, that’s what Heinrich meant.
He didn’t say that he didn’t care for the people he’s had a direct hand in killing, he didn’t say he felt nothing, he's just choosing to postpone those feelings until his job is finished, if he didn't they'd only serve to get in his way. The point that he was trying to get across to her was the fact that he no longer has a choice but to do it, the world around him has diluted his environment to such a shape where killing people becomes necessary to protect people.
He’s hopelessly stuck with only one way out.
To defeat Satan.
He’ll continue on the dark path because it’s the only path that will lead him to the absolute ending where he can finally walk back into the light.
He’s not heartless, if anything, he has a bigger heart than anyone else because he’s the one who has to suffer through such a burden for the sake of Ash and everyone else.
He’s pitiful.
“Heinrich...” Ash mutters softly, her words barely sliding out of her lips. “What do I do?”
“Alright alright! More flour please!” said Sena Durbin as she swirls cake batter with a whisk while holding a large bowl the size of her torso.
Standing next to her with shoulders slumped and a dejected glare is Zurvick, who sighs and pulls out a big bag of flour from the cabinet adjacent to him.
The two are standing in the kitchen of Ash’s home, and judging by Sena’s appearance, it’s obvious that the two are in the process of cooking.
“Thanks!”
Sena puts the bowl on the counter and grabs a handful of flour, she dumps it into the cake batter and begins swirling again merrily. With cake batter stuck on her cheek going unnoticed, her hands covered in flour and her little white apron stained with chocolate, it would seem that she doesn’t have a care in the world.
Which would be totally fine, if it weren’t for the fact that this particular girl is in the process of leading a rebellion against the Devil with the future of humanity at stake.
And that fact isn’t lost on Zurvick, who as if struck by a bolt of lightning, came to the realization that baking a cake is that last thing they should be doing at the moment.
“Wait a second…” He said as he was in the process of handing Sena the casting tray to pour the cake batter into. “What in the world are we doing!?”
Sena snatches the square casting tray out of his hand and replies cheerfully, “We’re baking a cake!”
“It’s not about the damn cake! We’re at war here, shouldn’t there be something else we oughta be doing right now??”
Sena puts the finishing touches on shaping the batter into the tray and proceeds to slide it into the oven as though she were a seasoned patisserie.
After shutting the oven door, she slaps her hands together and a puff of flour plumes out from all around her.
Completely ignoring Zurvick, she says, “Alright alright! The cake is gonna take a while to finish, so how about I make us a snack while we wait?”
“Nooooo! I don’t want cake or a snack!”
“Oh my King, you have yet to eat one of my famous deserts. I assure you, it’ll be worth the wait.”
Zurvick is pulling at his hair in a comedic fashion when he shouts, “It’s not about the wait either!”
After almost becoming a bald man, he looks to Sena and finds that she’s already in the process of pouring vegetable oil on a hot skillet over the stove.
All forms of frustration cease to a standstill and all he can do is flatten his gaze and look on blankly as she hums a tune like a housewife.
“.....”
“Do me a favor and grab me the honey.”
“...Yes.”
The great King of Troy resigns to the fact that there’s no use complaining, and like a chef's assistant, he pulls a jar of honey out of the cabinet.
Sena grabs a couple bananas and after peeling them, starts cutting them into slices before putting them onto the hot skillet.
She takes the honey and pours it into a bowl, then she dumps in a small dose water from a jar and hands the bowl back to Zurvick.
“Go ahead and whip this up will you?”
“...Yes.”
Without any further objections, he follows her orders like a pouting child and starts stirring the honey and water while the bananas fry in the skillet.
“Oaah I almost forgot the cinnamon!” Sena exclaimed as she starts rummaging through the spice cabinet in an overly frantic fashion. “My fried honey bananas are my specialty, it’d be a travesty without the cinnamon!”
Looking at her making a mess while stirring the honey and water like an idiot, he notices something gleaming under the flour on her left hand.
“Hey, Sena.”
“What what?” she asked as she finally grabbed hold of the little glass container carrying the cinnamon.
“Is that a wedding ring?”
As soon as that question exited his lips, her shoulders jump and she loses her grip on the cinnamon, causing to shatter onto the ground by her feet.
“Huh?” Zurvick is taken aback by her reaction.
She stays silent for a second and then turns to him, revealing a strained smile while answering, “Yes it is.”
“So you’re married huh?”
“...I am.”
By now the overwhelming feeling of awkwardness assaults his senses and an unpleasant sweat is felt rolling down his temple. It’s as though he had just stepped on a landmine. And just like a landmine, he gets stuck on this topic.
He doesn’t have the delicacy to redirect himself out of this obviously touchy subject and ends up asking something to which the answer to it throws any kind of good mood right out the window.
“O-Oh... Is he part of the rebellion as well?”
“He’s dead.”
That instant answer that makes him cringe.
“S-Sorry...”
Sena takes a deep breath and readjusts her face back into a smile before saying, “No no don’t worry about it!"
“But still, I didn’t mean to bring up something so sad. I just assumed everything was normal considering you still wear your ring.”
“Well, we’re still married after all.”
Perplexed by that statement, Zurvick tilts his head.
“Huh?”
“Well you know, ‘till death do us part’. Just because he isn’t alive doesn’t mean we’re no longer married.”
“Um... Are you perhaps misunderstanding that line in the marriage vows?”
Perplexed by his statement, now Sena tilts her head.
“Huh?”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but ‘till death do us part’ means that if one of you dies, you’re technically parted and therefore no longer married.”
“HAH!?”
“You didn’t know that!?”
Sena writhes as though a stunning turn of events struck her square in the chest.
“It can’t be...” She slumps over the counter in an overly dramatic fashion. “I’m not married anymore...”
Not wanting to kick someone while they're down, Zurvick just takes a big sigh; and upon breathing back in his nose is overrun with the sweet smell of bananas, followed by the bitter smell of smoke.
Quickly turning around, he sees that the fried bananas are getting charcoal black and smoking up the kitchen.
“Oaaahh! The bananas! The bananas!”
Sena, still half drooped over the counter takes a look as well and her face drops.
“Guahaa~ nooo they’re burning!”
She immediately starts rushing towards the skillet to remove it from the oven, but in a sheer twist of misfortune, sets off a chain of events that escalate to the point where cooking would be no longer feasible in this home.
On her way to the skillet, she tripped over Zurvick’s foot; and trying to keep her from face-planting into the hot stove, Zurvick grabs her waste. But in the process of doing that he loses his balance and tries to grab onto the table; completely missing his target, he accidentally grabs the handle of the jug of water instead.
“Uwaah!”
“Kyaaah!”
The two fall to the ground and the impact of their thud tipped over the bag of flour and it drops to the ground in a plume of dust, but they are still fortunate that Zurvick slowed her down enough to not have the imprint of stove coils on her face.
But the damage isn’t done.
Because Zurvick had accidentally propelled the water out of the jug as he fell, and a large portion of it lands directly onto the skillet containing burning hot oil.
Anyone who spends enough time in the kitchen knows that that is not a good combination.
The oil lights on fire and exploding bubbles turn into flying sparks.
And one of these sparks just so happens to ignite one of the fine particles of dust floating in the air, and the two forces of nature mixing results a miniature dust bomb.
BBBBOOOOOOSSSHHHHHHH!!!!!!
In an instant, the entire kitchen is covered in smoke.
Coughing and with ears ringing, Zurvick gets to his feet and jolts out of the kitchen and into the living room so he can take some much needed breaths of clean air.
“Hey! Are you alright??”
“Yes yes no problem!” Sena is heard shouting from within the smoke. “I have everything under control!”
“You obviously don’t! This isn’t even my house, Ash is going to kill me for this!”
“Don’t worry my King, my other specialty is cleaning.”
“It’s not even about that!!!”
Knock knock knock.
Zurvick’s frustrated shouting is interrupted by the door knocking behind him; but before he could go to answer, someone unlocks it from the outside and walks right it.
“H-Hey!”
In comes Heinrich Zimmer, dressed in his black outfit with the pentagram.
“I have some news.” Heinrich said, ignoring the smokey hue of the living room and paying no mind to the smell of smoke.
“You couldn’t wait for me to answer the door? It’s not polite to just barge into someone else’s home!”
Heinrich shrugs his shoulders and says, “What do you care? It’s not even your house. And besides, Ash is the one who gave me the key.”
“Ugh...”
“Anyways,” Heinrich said, shooting Zurvick a stern glare. “I have found a way for us to defeat Satan.”
“What!?”
“You should be happy to know that there is very little damage to the kitchen my King!” Said Sena while walking out of the smokey kitchen wearing a wide smile.
She instantly feels the heavy atmosphere around her and catches sight of something that throws her expression into a quick 180 degree turn.
Her cheery smile shifts into a sharp look that oozes killing intent the moment she looks into the multicolored eyes of Heinrich Zimmer.
In front of her is the evil man closest to Satan's side, he is the man who's sending ripples of turmoil through the Capital like a tidal wave.
So like a bull, she charges at Heinrich before Zurvick could even mutter a word.
“!!”
In a fast twitch reaction to a sudden threat on his life, Heinrich pulls one of his hidden blades from his left sleeve and into his right hand before lunging his weapon at the girl. The motion was so quick and so smooth, it was hard to see him do it.
Yet freakishly, the girl tilts her entire body to the side, avoids the blade and grabs the back of his forearm. With her other hand, she slams her pointed fingers directly into his pronator teres muscle, which is a short muscle connecting the ends of the humerus, his upper arm bones, and ulna to the radius, his forearm bones.
The pronator teres functions to rotate the arm toward the inside, as when the hand is turned so the palm is facing downward. Having that muscle suddenly activate violently by an outside force, causes Heinrich’s fingers to lose their function momentarily, and the result is his weapon flying out of his hand.
“!!?”
Sena turns her body and grabs the short-blade mid-flight with her left arm before pushing up with all her strength and head butting Heinrich right under his chin, throwing him back a few feet.
Heinrich instantly tastes blood in his mouth, and through vision akin to the likes of firecrackers, he catches sight of the blue haired girl’s next relentless attack and does just enough to avoid keeping his head from getting skewered by his own weapon.
(This girl is entirely too fast!!)
And because she is so fast, he knows that fighting her in close quarters unarmed is a death sentence.
So he does the most rational thing considering his position.
He runs away.
Heinrch jolts up the spiral staircase up to the second story of the house and Sena quickly pursues him.
“Wait!” Zurvick shouts, having no choice but to give chase as well.
Things escalated from baking a cake, to almost dying in the process of baking a cake, to a death match between two allies in less than 20 seconds. That's barely enough time for him to react.
Once in the upstairs hallway, Heinrich kicks out the window and throws himself outside. It just so happens that the adjacent house to Ash’s is a full story smaller, so he lands on the neighbors roof and continues to run away.
As if shot out by a cannon, Sena flies through the window and roles as she lands, picking up more speed in the process.
(Alright, I should be able to take advantage of my size from up here.)
Or so he thought.
A projectile is thrown at him at such a speed that the air seems to be cracking as it makes its way to him.
“Shit!”
Heinrich barely avoids a direct hit by what looks to be a roof tile, but as soon as he does, another is sent right at his face.
These aren’t enough to kill him, but they’d definitely do some serious damage; and if that wasn’t enough, the fact is that this freakish girl is throwing the tiles at him while in a full sprint.
Since he has to avoid them, all this is doing is closing the gap between the two twice as fast.
After parrying a couple more tiles, Sena is right on top of him, her emerald eyes distorted with the desire to kill shine in the sun as she swings the blade and twirls her entire body in the attack.
Heinrich can’t believe he’s in this position, but he still has the composure to use this position against his enemy; that’s what he specializes in.
The only problem with that is, this girl in front of him doesn’t leave him any openings.
All he can do is tilt his body to the side and the blade takes off a lock of his blond hair. If there ever was an opening, this would be it, as of right now the weapon is as far away from him as can be.
But he’s off balance, and his attempt to attack her is slower than normal and he misses.
The consequences of that miss, is the back of Sena’s heel digging right into the side of his face.
She twirled her body after that miss and struck him with a flying roundhouse kick with so much force that it knocked him flat on his back after doing a couple awkward twists in the air.
“Gbbahh!”
Knowing full well that she dazed him, Sena looks to capitalize on this opportunity and prepares to pounce on him with her blade pointing right into his throat.
“You bastarrrddddd!!!” she shouts intensly as she prepares to strike him.
The two of them are looking into each other’s eyes and share an almost surreal moment when Sena catches sight of something that shocks her.
Heinrich is smiling.
Unless the enemy is suicidal, it's usually a bad sign when an enemy is smiling in what should be an obvious moment of defeat. It usually means that he has a trump card hidden and the assailant fell directly into his trap.
But by the time she realizes that, it’s too late.
There’s a blade pointing up from Heinrich’s coat, and looking closely it’s obvious that he’s holding it with his hand upwards in hopes to skewer her as she falls. This is the only way Heinrich survives this, even though he specializes in close quarters combat, he felt that she had the upper-hand on him in a cramped space because of her speed and size.
By taking the fight out in the open, he’d be able to take advantage of his size; and in the simplest way, this is how he’s going to do it.
He took advantage of the fact that fighting in close quarters involves narrowed focus, especially at this level; so he knew that she wouldn’t notice that he snuck his arm inside the sleeve of his coat as she chased him.
He knew that she wouldn’t notice any sly movements unless it was part of an attack that directly threatened her safety; he knew that she didn’t know he had another hidden weapon.
That was taking advantage of her movements and using them against her.
And his reach is longer than hers; he’ll stab her long before her blade ever reaches him.
This is taking advantage of his size.
It is his victory.
At least it was supposed to be.
At the very, very last second, Zurvick runs into Sena and decks her away from Heinrich’s blade and she is thrown a few feet away.
“!!”
Heinrich’s blade isn’t left untouched however, Zurvick’s leg slid across is as he fell and his blood is spilled onto the roof top.
“My King!” Sena shouted as soon as she regained her footing.
“You!!!”
Her anger and rage is immediately redirected at Heinrich, who’s already gotten up and prepared his next move.
Zurvick’s appearance alone wasn’t enough to stop the two from continuing this fight to the death. It’s only now that Zurvick sees what kind of people he’s dealing with. Both of them are full blown soldiers, including this goofball of a girl he's become acquainted with over the last two weeks.
“STOP IT!!!”
Just before the two are about to dash at each other, Zurvick’s loud voice stops them dead in their tracks.
“My King! This is the bastard stealing our citizens away! If we can kill him, we’ll be----“
“No!”
“??”
“He’s not our enemy, it’s hard to explain, but he’s here to help us! If you kill him, our whole plan goes up in smoke!”
“W-Wha??”
“And you!” Zurvick shouted, shifting his glare at Heinrich. “What the hell are you doing!? You were going to kill her!”
Heinrich shrugs his shoulders and says, “No shit I was, I don’t know if you noticed, but she was trying to kill me too.”
“Well if you did, our plans would go up in smoke too!”
“Hmm?”
“This girl is the leader of the rebellion.”
“Oh?”
“That means the both of you are going to have to work together.”
Heinrich sighs as if letting out the excess air caught in his chest from the tension of the battle. As though completely calmed down, he says, “That’s fine by me. It’s her you should be worried about.”
Turning to her, he notices that she hasn’t let down her guard, and she’s fuming with anger. Her chest is puffing in and out and her shoulders rock with each breath, it’s as though she’s desperately struggling to keep herself from attacking.
“Sena... You have to believe me, he’s our ally.”
“My King, I do believe you… But I just can’t forgive the actions of this bastard in front of me. He’s killed a countless number of our people!”
“How do you know they’re dead?” Heinrich asked, his sarcastic tone wasn’t lost on Sena, which only made her more angry.
“Then what have you done to them!?”
Heinrich blows air out of his nose and replies, “That’s actually what I’m here to talk to King Zurvick about.”
“Huh..?”
Zurvick gets to his feet, and while still holding the wound on his leg he asks, “Weren’t they forced into fighting for Satan?”
“Precisely.”
“Then—“
“But it is much worse than that.”
“.....”
Heinrich begins walking away as he says, “I’d rather not talk about it up here just in case someone sees me with you two. Let’s go inside, we need to clean up that cut of yours anyways.”
Zurvick and Sena look at each other, and using Sena’s shoulder as a crutch, the two follow Heinrich back along the rooftops towards Ash’s home.
“What!?”
Is both Sena’s and Zurvick’s reactions to the story Heinrich had just told them.
From the 5 pillars stretching into the sky invisible to the regular man’s eye used as a beacon for souls and a proverbial stairway to Heaven. To the true identities of the gatherers; and the fact that Satan is going to use their soulless corpses to raise the rest of his army by attacking the Capitals of the other countries of the world, all of this is almost too much to bear in one sitting.
This was somewhat of information overload for them. All of it is weighing heavily on their subconscious like an anvil dropped on top of their heads. Every last shred of info Heinrich spilled has the high potential to utterly destroy them.
“But.” Heinrich said with a steely glare and his finger pointed upwards as though trying to get the attention of a couple of school kids. “We can still win.”
“How? We can’t attack what we can’t see.”
“Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Though I can’t be certain, there are original buildings we have used as recruitment centers connected to those pillars. If we can destroy those, perhaps the pillars go down as well. At worst it might make the pillars accessible for us.”
Zurvick holds his chin and says, “But wouldn’t that blow your cover? If all the sudden we start attacking places that only you can see, wouldn’t Satan become suspicious of you?”
“Of course.” Heinrich quickly replies, “Unless we go about attacking them in a different fashion than what we're used to.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a smart guy, think about how we can go about destroying those recruitment centers without drawing too much attention to ourselves. Satan doesn’t know of the rebellion, but he is aware that there are still those who oppose him in the city. It wouldn’t be all too shocking to him if a smaller group like a militia decided to attack one of the centers in retaliation against the draft.”
“I get that... It’s just that I don’t know how we’ll go about doing it.”
“You two are the leaders here, you’ll figure it out.”
Heinrich grabs his short blade of the table right in front of Sena and puts it back into his sleeve before turning around to walk out the door.
“What about Ash?” Zurvick asks before he could leave.
“She’s fighting all this in her own way. She’ll be fine.”
Heinrich is about to open the door when Sena breaks her silence and says, “Wait.”
“Hm?”
“Aren’t you going to do anything to stop the drafts?”
“No.”
“But!”
“That’s your job. What do you think Satan would think of me if all the sudden I just stopped bringing people to the centers?”
“Those people are being sacrificed! They’re being killed under your watch!”
“I know that, it’s unfortunate, but sacrificing them is an integral part of my job as a spy.”
“You bastard, don’t you have a heart!? They are innocent!”
Heinrich has just had the same question asked to him by Ash, and quite honestly he’s tired of dealing with earnest people with moral values like her. He can’t understand how or why they don’t get that he has no control over the situation he’s put himself in. He’s tired of being judged by those who don’t know what it means to be in his position.
And this is when he frowns, if there’s one person who should know that, it’d be this blue haired girl standing in front of him shouting hypocrisies at him as though her hands weren’t stained with blood as well.
For the first time, Heinrich shows anger when he says, “You’re the last person I want to hear complaints about sacrifices from.”
“!?”
Zurvick looks at Sena and can see her demeanor instantly change.
“You know what it’s like to kill someone standing in the way of fulfilling your mission. You know that sacrificing people is a necessary evil; whether it’s right or not depends on whether the ends justify the means.”
Sena’s clinched fists start to shake and her breathing becomes sharp.
“If Satan is defeated at the end of all this, then those sacrifices won’t be seen as sacrifices anymore would they? They’d simply be stepping stones that had to have been walked over to reach the desired future.”
He pauses for a moment and looks her square in the eye when he finishes, “But you… You failed, and your sacrifice was what it was, a useless sacrifice.”
Those last words buckle Sena to her knees and she can only look on as Heinrich opens the door and begins to walk outside.
“W-Wait…” she said softly, just barely catching his attention. “How did you know?”
Heinrich doesn’t turn to her when he answers, “I was at your wedding.”
The door shuts behind him and he leaves the King and the girl in silence.
Tears begin to well up in Sena’s eyes and Zurvick can’t help but ask, “What happened to your husband?”
Sena looks up to him and reveals a fake smile when she says, "The cake oughta be just about finished by now!"
As if avoiding him, she gets to her feet and rushes towards the smokey kitchen.
"Hey wait up a second, I might be overstepping my boundaries here, but I'd really like to know what Heinrich is talking about."
Sena pauses, and her blank smile turns into a broken one when she replies, “I’m sorry my King, but I’d rather not talk about it.”
Heinrich walks out into the streets and sighs as he makes his way from the stoop of Ash’s house. It’s then that he catches sight of a figure dressed in black standing in front of him as though it were waiting for him this entire time.
He can tell by its demeanor that it isn’t one of his gatherers, despite the fact it’s wearing the uniform perfectly.
“Have you come to return to your home, Captain Ash?”
“.....”
“If so, I recommend taking that uniform off before you enter. Your King has a guest who won’t hesitate to take your head off if you just show up unannounced dressed as an enemy like that.”
“...I’m not...”
“Hmm?”
“I’m not going home.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To go back to the castle with you…”
“So you’re saying that---“
“That’s right. You said I still have a choice right? Well I’m choosing to stay by your side, even if it means I have to do horrible things.”
Heinrich is very surprised, he was certain that she’d go running home with her tail in between her legs after coming to the realization that people are going to have to die for her to continue on this path next to him.
He thought for sure she’d weigh her options and choose the easiest route.
But what he doesn’t know; is that Ash isn’t fighting in this war to win for herself; she’s fighting in this war to win for everyone else. She’s doing this for Zurvick, for Noah, for her family and friends, for her fellow Trojans, and for the entire world.
She’s willing to go down Heinrich’s path and taint herself with the tragedies of others on the way to making them happy once more.
She’s willing to make the sacrifices needed to win this war.
The largest sacrifice of course, being herself.
If Heinrich can sacrifice himself for people he doesn’t know, then she can too.
And in the end of all this, perhaps then she could look back and say it was all worth it, while still bearing the guilt of what she’s done. Until that time, she’s going to choose not to let it affect her.
She’s going to throw away her humanity for a short while and walk alongside someone who fully understands what it takes to do such a thing.
Heinrich smiles, he finally has someone who understands what he’s doing all this for.
There’s no more words that need to be said, she told him that her path is by his side, and that’s more than enough for him.
“Alright.” He said with a smile as he walks past her. “Let’s go win this war.”
Satan is in the Queen’s suite in the Trojan castle resting on top of the bed with eyes wide open. It takes a lot of energy to send all that power towards each individual member of the 32,000 Soulless spread across all corners of the world, especially with only half of his true power here on Earth; so any chance he gets to rest is a welcomed one.
Zoning out on the roof and contemplating his next moves, he hears a thud against his door. Knowing that Heinrich would either just walk in or knock three times, he immediately senses that it’s someone else.
But who? Who would be bold enough other than Heinrich to interrupt Satan’s valuable resting time?
“Come in.” Satan orders, and the answer to that question opens the door and enters.
It’s a dead man with a pentagram seal branded into his chest; he’s naked, and there’s a hole in his throat that goes all the way through to the top of his head.
If this dead man could speak full sentences, he’d tell Satan that Heinrich and a girl had attempted to kill him, took his clothes, and locked him in a closet room for days before he could escape.
But Satan can piece it all together and assume what is going on here just by the sight of this wandering Soulless.
Satan can interpret this as many different things, all of which are likely not good for the safety of his right hand man working as a security blanket of sorts for the rebellion. The last person that needs to be suspicious of his actions is Satan, and he prides himself at keeping such feelings at bay; but it would seem he stepped on his own foot in this case.
If he had waited, he would have found out who and what his gatherers were from the mouth of Satan himself in due time. Instead he let his curiosity get to him and hastily went about doing something as sloppy as trying to kill off one of these immortal creatures and having it backfire in about as bad of a way as possible.
Satan starts rolling through all the many different scenarios in his head, which causes him to reveal a thin smile and say,
“Well isn’t this interesting... What should I do about this? Heinrich Zimmer...”
Capital Attack: END
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