2 Even old demons can hope

Life was a web of forever unravelling despair and joy. This is what the state of the never and is. Light burnt and darkness cradled.

Dream wandered and infinity plotted. Death waited to watch, destiny thought himself supreme.

This was a world full of horrors and wonders, this was a world where god himself could perish.

The emotion that bubbled in Zekram was one he hadn't felt for long immemorial aeons, since the demise of his sire against the Abrahamic god.

He had felt as if his purpose had disappeared. He had been a tool, one of the greatest of Lucifer and Lilith. He had known it since the beginning and had revelled in that fact.

Zekram had thrown himself with joy to all the tasks that were given to him even if his demise seemed inevitable, unavoidable.

He had been fuelled by the endless bloodlust in his veins, by the love that had been engraved in his beings for his creators.

He raped, killed, looted, tortured and did all of those things without batting an eye. Zekram was the name of a useless tool that had lost its wielders.

He was Bael, the great king, an Archdemon of pride, slayer of the seraph Kamael and for the first time since their death, He found purpose.

His youngest granddaughter had been married to one of the descendant spawn of Phenex. How disappointed the other Archdemon would have been if he had seen what his descendants had been reduced to if he had seen how weak, human they were. He would have probably killed them before doing the same for himself to be saved from the ignominy.

Well, after having seen a copy version of the rating game that his spawn had brought him, maybe Phenex would have left the third son alive. After all, he looked like a proper demon, like a proper Phenex.

His attention went back to the talking form of his spawn. Bael knew that he was talking but he had chosen to erase for the moment the possibility for him to listen. He would have probably killed him a long time ago if he hadn't learnt this helpful trick from Astaroth.

Reading the lips of his son, he could see that the fool was complaining about Rias, about the Gremory clan and how unfair and abnormal it was for Rias just like her, brother to be so powerful.

Bael's eyes were the eyes of a higher being. With them, he could see things that most wouldn't imagine. With them, he saw in the heart, in the soul of his child. He saw the jealousy, the envy, the lust, the anger that he felt towards his older sister and her children.

Bael removed the spell and was greeted with the shrill sound of the voice of his spawn. "Quiet," he whispered. With this word, the world itself shut down. The acidic rain became silent. Noise died unable to exist and finally, Oh finally, he shut up.

Fear was not engraved on the face of his son and Zekram forced himself to not allow the disgust he felt to push him toward killing his own blood. Saiororg was too young. Maybe in a decade.

"Do you know why I didn't smother you at birth?" he finally asked after a moment of wanted silence for his son.

The boy tried to speak but no noise came out of his mouth. "It was rhetorical. Don't bother and don't worry, I won't kill you," yet he added mentally. So weak that he couldn't break out of such a simple reality manipulation trick. How did this thing come out of him?

"If things had depended only on my will, your sister, Venelana would be the current head of this clan, my heir." He ignored the hatred and anger that appeared on the face of his son at the uttering of the name of his sister.

"Let me tell you a story, something that only my sires Lucifer and Lilith and Astaroth knew." He saw curiosity enter the eyes of the spawn.

Bael's gaze swept over the horizon of the underworld, over the world where blood had rained on every inch, blood where untold atrocities were committed with savage glee.

"My sire and the other three princes were not supposed to fall against the Abrahamic god. What had made my sire so great wasn't his strength, it wasn't his beauty or charisma. It was one thing, child. What made him greater than his maker, that could have made him greater than even the great beast of the darkness was his mind," Zekram spoke.

"My sire had begun the creation of three weapons, three prototypes that when wielded by him would have allowed him to easily win against the Abrahamic god and all of his host and allies."

With a flick of his will, he removed his interdiction over the world and noise came back. He ignored how the spawn rubbed his neck as if he had been choked. "Prototypes?" he asked.

"Yes, prototypes. They were supposed to be the first three. One was personally overseen by the Morningstar and the great mother. Astaroth and I made sure the two others would exist," Bael answered.

"You speak of them as if they still exist," the young devil pointed. Maybe Bael would let him live more than a decade.

"They do," Bael confirmed. "We didn't need to hide them. They are in plain sight but no one knows of their existence."

Bael smiled exposing his canines, letting the madness inside begging to be unfurled seep in an infinitesimal short amount spill in the world. "They were given names."

Tears of fire began to rain from the sky. Bael knew that by letting escape less than a fraction of his true self in the world, everyone who lived in his territory and was strong enough or lucky enough to be in a protected place would be burnt, marked with hellfire, scared in a way that could never be healed. It was the way of the world. This generation of devils had forgotten this. It was time to remember. "They were given the names of Rizevim, Ajuka and Sirzechs."

"You're speaking of the three super devils," the devil said in shock.

"A tool capable of denying everything divine, every miracle, a second one to predict and construct everything. A system equal if not greater to the one created by the Abrahamic god. A third tool, a sword of destruction that would reduce to nothing everything on the path of his wielder to nothing."

"Astaroth and you knew."

"We did," Bael confirmed. "The rizevim was personally developed by the Morningstar and mother Lilith with the use of human souls and blood. Astaroth and I were infused with the necessary components and tasked with reproducing with damned mortal souls. It took many tries. There were a lot of failures that needed to be destroyed. I knew that I had almost succeeded when I had Venelana. Her existence is the reason why I didn't kill you this day. You were lucky to be born just after her."

"She was strong," Bael said remembering a half-breed spawn born as strong as a high-class being. "Our sires had told us that we needed human blood and that it would take two generations for the weapons to be created."

"The Gremory boy was born after his mother had raped and killed an Irish demigod of Dagda so I accepted when your sister went to marry Zeoticus. She may think I didn't but if it had been the case, the boy would have been dead when he came asking for her hand."

Bael could not escape the joyous laugh that escaped his lips. His spawn looked at him as if he had gone mad but the happiness that was bubbling in Bael seemed never-ending. A constant Euphoria that he had missed so much "They created the Sirzechs like it was expected and Astaroth was able to make the Ajuka."

"Then why, estimated father didn't the Morningstar use them?" the boy asked him.

Displeasure and anger surged in him but Bael held it in check. 'Don't forget that Saiororg isn't yet ready' he reminded himself.

"My sire and the other died because the one that sat in the heavens attacked the underworld with all of his remaining cherubs and seraphs two years after the creation of the Sirzechs and the Ajuka. They were too young to be used in a way that would be helpful but even then, my sire could have won if the Rizevim had been loyal." The spoiled boy that had the honour of inheriting the name of the Morningstar, the Rizevim had refused the summoning of his lord creator.

Bael and the other Archdaemons had fought for days against the messengers of the god of Abraham. So many of the siblings of Bael had perished under the disgusting light of the angels. Michael fought against Lilith and was able to give her a blow that even to this day she hadn't healed of. In return, the mother of all the devils cursed the angel.

She weakened him and made him lose the majority of his might. Michael Demiurgos was still the strongest angelic being in existence, a divine existence capable of going blow-to-blow with some of the strongest Hindu deities like Indra but he would never be able to stand over the Dream and the Nothing like he had in the past.

All the other remaining Archdaemons had fought against the Cherubs and the Seraphs. They may have suffered great loss to their number but to this day, it remained no more than five seraphs on Heaven's side and no Cherubim. This victory had resulted in merely 27 still living Archdaemons, most of whom had to go slumber to not fade too.

Lucifer and his father had in their fight broken the barrier between the world continuing their struggle in the dimensional gap before the breach would be closed.

Hours later, both them and their still living enemies would feel the balance breaking, a void significating the end of their respective creators. Bael and his siblings had let the remaining angels live. What was the point they had all thought? The reason is their respective existences, their creator had perished at each other hands.

"You sided with the young devils that wanted to abolish and change the underworld you and other Archdaemons created. It was because you hated him and the descendants of the other Satans that had sided with him. Aren't I right Father?"

"You're not wrong," Bael admitted. "I wanted to make him suffer, to make him pay. I was unable to. He didn't fight, he stayed hidden."

The young devils led by the young devils Falbium, Serafall, Ajuka and Sirzechs won. Bawl had been bereft of every goal, of everything justifying his existence. He had wondered a lot if he shouldn't chosen to go into slumber like the rest of his kin, choosing to wake maybe at the destined end that the world would surely face one day.

That had been his goal. The brother of Venelana had been a disappointment since the beginning like most other devils of his generation. It was in their names, devils, not demons.

He had planned to wait for Saiororg to be mature and strong enough to enter into an eternal slumber.

Lucifer and Lilith had both hated and been enthralled by the humans. Bael had been too young to understand at that time why they had such fascination for such feeble creatures.

They were weak fools thinking themselves master of their fates when they were just puppets and toys to be played with by their better.

It was always like this. Those that were great amongst them, that carved their names through history were the ones with either supernatural blood or because they had the support or attention of a higher being.

They were cruel, crueler than ever Archdaemons. They were the teachers of Lucifer and Lilith's children. They taught them vices, sinning and like good students, demons basked in it to the point it permeated their essence.

Their souls some of them taught are infinite limited, and little in the great scope of the world. What they had greater than all races, engraved in their being that Bael had to admit was almost unreal malleability.

They could be exposed body and soul to all kinds of different stimuli and they could bounce back.

It was because of this malleability that ancient gods, that were older than even the current iteration of reality the Abrahamic god had decided to experiment on the souls of those lowly beings before being extinguished.

It was why the worship, the faith, the emotion of those emotions could affect the world around them, empower or even almost change aspects of reality as demons and higher beings like gods did.

Those experiments, those modifications of the animus of human beings had been the reason why Lucifer had tasked his subject to bring as many mortal souls as possible into the underworld.

Lucifer if he had more time would have been able to create more weapons like he had with those the current generation called super devils.

He had asked all of his archdemons after the success of producing the Sirzechs and the Ajuka to produce as many offspring and spawns as possible with either living mortals or with the mortal souls of the damned.

Souls could feel, could hurt even though nerves didn't exist. The body and the soul weren't really different. The body was just the outline. Everything mechanism, every gene that made sure that a human could function depended on the state of the soul.

Most offspring took after their mortal parent so they were either killed or discarded. Those who took after their demonic parents were taken to be raised by them.

The mortal souls that were seen as producing too many low-quality offspring were twisted, their minds and selves broken.

This was the reason for the existence of the low-class devils before Ajuka introduced newly transformed devils with the chess pieces he had created.

"Why are you telling me this estimate Father?" his spawn asked him. Bael ignored the falsehood. He knew that the spawn hated him. What he had taught just had the result of strengthening the hatred he harboured in his heart over Bael and his sister Venelana. Good, maybe the boy would prove useful.

"I had thought that everything I and the other demons were fighting was nought after the fall of the Morningstar."

"Venelana," Bael chuckled. "The gift that keeps on giving. She gave me something I thought would not be possible. If my sire was still there today, he would have congratulated her. She proved him right."

Realization entered the eyes of the spawn. "Rias," the boy whispered. "The rating game, so it was the reason." He recognized jealousy in the words of the devil.

He knew that the envy of the spawn over the Gremory heiress would make sure that he would try to make things difficult for her. This was exactly what Bael needed.

Bael had seen the rating game and the girl seemed to be growing in an exponential way only when confronted with adversity.

Coals needed heat and pressure to be turned into diamonds. His granddaughter had grown in strength. She had reached in that fight against Riser what Bael knew was the higher end of the high class. Bael knew that to reach the ultimate class and go beyond that she needed only to be pushed.

Bael let his third eye and gaze through the eddies of Destiny. He saw destruction, struggle and the waking of things even older than him.

He closed it back satisfied. "You're dismissed," he said to his son.

He saw the confusion on the face of the devil "Great father?"

"Don't make me repeat myself spawn," Bael spat. "Unless you wish for your sister to finally take what was supposed to be hers?" he added.

Anger and hatred flared into the purple eyes of the spawn but unfortunately, he wasn't a complete fool. He bowed and scurried away like a rat.

Bael opened a gateway into his personal connection and from the gateway, an Urn of wine descended slowly on the table made of Kitsune's fur and fallen angel's feathers.

Bael removed another item from his collection, what he considered one of the greatest things in his possession after Venelana and her children. It was a skull, an angel's cranium to be more precise removed from the head of a seraph of YHWH. The skull was the one of the seraphim Kamael.

Bael had taken time after the great war to learn the art of bone sculpting. His instructor, a Mayan god that Bael had captured taught him everything that needed to sculp in a perfect way bone. Bael had like he had promised given the god his freedom by freeing him from reality with his power of destruction.

Bael had used what he had learned to build the cup that he now had in his hand. The Urn's top removed itself as if it was the work of invisible hands and served in Bael's cup the nectar that he contained that Bael had looted from Dionysus's temple. He spilled a part of it on the ground in honour of his fallen kin

Life was full of horrors and tragedies. The nectar touched the lips of the Archddaemon. He had forgotten that horrors and tragedies were just the beginning of the greatest joys for a demon. Bael drank under a purple sky for the first time since the end of the Great War thinking and hoping for the future.