Who is like God?

I woke up feeling sore but in a good way. I woke up feeling contempt, happy, free of all worries. I woke up in her arms embracing me from behind.

Akeno's wings were also displayed. I didn't know if she had released them before I fell asleep or while she was unconscious but her soft dark feathery wings acted as covers.

This hadn't been a cruel dream, a fantasy I would have woken up from, a cruelty that searched to make me suffer.

I didn't try to move. I didn't want to wake her up and honestly, I didn't want to move at all. I wanted this bliss to last forever. I had found Heaven on Earth and I didn't want to lose it.

I closed back my eyes listening to her breathing. I listened to the way her heart was beating in her chest.

The symphony of her heart calmed me even more and grounded me more. Things would change. It was a fact but this was a change I was happy to embrace.

Last night, I felt loved and cared for. I had felt as if for an instant, I was the most precious and beautiful thing in the universe. This feeling, this euphory, I don't think I was ready to lose it.

What Akeno and I now had, I wanted it to last forever. This was just the beginning yet I wished for it to never end and I knew the only way to preserve this was strength. The only thing that could keep me happy was power.

I focused on the sea of my soul. I focused and inspected my demonic energy, my essence and the authority I had usurped from Kagutsuchi.

My demonic energy had increased so clearly in the last days even though I wished it hadn't been at the cost of all of Kuoh.

I was now firmly in the ultimate class level. Ultimate-class beings were rare. Sure, I was far from being amongst the strongest beings who called this reality theirs but I knew I was surely in the top five hundred strongest beings.

Most pantheons had or even to this day lacked stronger gods, rulers or members who surpassed the ultimate class.

This has been the reason why our pantheon, the Abrahamic pantheon is so prominent today. God could create thousands of beings with a thought of ultimate class strength who could grow strong. More than that, there was his cherubim, Thrones and Seraphim who were amongst the strongest things in existence and made sure to destroy all of his opponents.

Lucifer, his preferred son was able to create with the first woman who also stole from Eden a race of beings capable of matching the forces of heaven.

The Grigori were led by a seraph whose most direct subordinates were formers angels of high Hierarchy.

Many pantheons had ceased to exist because they either were too angry or dumb or both and attacked us or were simply attacked by us and wiped out of the surface of the Earth.

What was the point if your chief god was an ultimate class being but even the weakest of the demon pillar of the Ars Goetia was stronger than them?

Our history was riddled with stories of our ancestors destroying, defiling, violating and ruining creation. There was a reason why universally, we were disliked at best and hated at worst.

Every imaginable nomination had probably been committed by a devil before or was created as an idea by a devil.

I turned toward a second ocean, what I'll call my divine core, to what represented the authority I had usurped. It had grown. I didn't know if it was a weird godly effect or phenomenon I didn't understand yet or if it was because my essence had impacted it.

I finally turned toward my essence. I could see it working, circulating through my body at each instant. It wasn't merely increasing my strength or my demonic power.

My essence was increasing the functions of my body. I could feel it strengthen my heart making him able to pump more blood, making my inside more efficient, less mortal. I could feel it changing my brain sharpening my focus, my mind and my senses.

Those three parts of me rejoined each other when they circulated through my body becoming a singular stream instead of separated Oceans.

I felt Akeno move behind me. A gasp took life from her before she tightened the embrace she had on me. "I thought it was a dream," I heard her whisper.

She kissed my neck. She began to pepper kisses on my cheeks, nose, forehead and temple "I am with the most beautiful woman," she spoke.

I tried to fake being asleep but I could not any more. I rolled on my other side to look at her. A giggle escaped me "What if I was sleeping," I told her not even trying to stop her or move out of the way.

"I knew you weren't or I would have tried to restrain myself more," she told me, a small smile decorating her beautiful face.

"Restrain yourself more? It seems you can't get enough of me," I teased her.

"Of course, I can't," she answered shamelessly looking me in the eyes "I love you and as I said, you are the most beautiful woman in the world."

I felt myself blush and I knew that I was sporting a stupid grin at that moment "I'm sure Aphrodite and other love and beauty goddesses wouldn't agree," I joked.

"Did I stutter? They are fucking irrelevant Rias. They aren't you. They aren't as beautiful and kind and smart and beautiful as you are."

"You said beautiful two times," I told her.

"Only because It is The truth," she answered immediately.

I felt my face burning from inside. When did she become so smooth? Something was afoot or had she unlocked the legendary natural fallen angel Rizz?

"But more than that, there is something else that makes you so much more than them," she told me softly.

"And what is that?" I whispered to her. I wanted to know how she saw me and what she thought of me. I wanted to hear her voice praise me.

Her head moved. She kisses my left cheek before coming close to my right ear "You are mine and only mine," she murmured before retreating.

"Am I wrong?" she asked me even though the smile on her face meant she already had the answer to this question. I tried to escape her gaze by moving my head to the side but one of her hands firmly but softly stopped me from doing so.

"You're not wrong," I told her softly.

"I want you to say it clearly Rias," she said to me. "I want to hear coming clearly from your beautiful lips."

I took a deep breath and locked my gaze with hers "I am yours and yours only Akeno Himejima. I love you." A kiss was the answer to my words.

*scene*

Michael woke up with pain. The pain was a familiar friend, a familiar sensation. It didn't mean that he liked it.

His eyes stayed closed, trying to ignore the pain, trying to ignore the world around him, trying to ignore the ghostly celestial chains around his hands and feet. He tried to ignore the nails piercing each of his twelve wings.

He was Michael Demiurgos, a Demiurgic Archangel triplet brother of Lucifer Morningstar and Gabriel Hornblower.

He was the one who lit up the spark that began the existence of this reality. He was the one gifted by his father with the power of the demiurge.

Things shouldn't be this way. Why were things this way? He wished his father was still there. He wished Helel was still there. He knew that if any of them were still alive, no matter their differences, he would have been saved, freed from his torment. Maybe if they were still there, he wouldn't feel so violated.

"I know you are awake Michael," a stern voice spoke

He opened his eyes. Outside of his prison, there was his torturer, the one who made him suffer for more than three centuries. "Sandalphon," he spat the name of the other angel as a curse.

Sandaplhon was a Cherub. He had chosen to look old, a rarity amongst angels. He was dressed as a general with different insignias and badges adorning his black suit. Sandalphon looked at him with cold piercing golden eyes. Sandalphon was his brother and Michael had made the error of trusting him but how could he not? Weren't they supposed to be family?

He had never kept his guard up around the Cherub, around any angel. He hadn't seen the need and even then he had been reduced by Lilith's curses, he shouldn't have lost, fell in the trap of the other angel.

"Please, Sandalphon, you don't have to do this," he spoke softly to his little brother even though he knew already his words would be in vain.

The cherub crossed into his room, walking through the wall as if he were a ghost "You're right brother. I don't have to do this. I need to do this."

"Do you think Father would have accepted what you are doing?" Michael asked the Cherub. Their father had been everything to them and every one of them from the highest angel to the lowest fallen was impacted by his death.

A kick flew to his head, breaking and caving his skull in. The pain had become familiar so unlike the first times, Michael didn't scream. He bit his tongue and waited as his skin mended back to a pristine condition.

"Father isn't here Brother and do you know why?" the other angel hissed. "It is not because of Helel and his little tantrum. Even then, whether he wished it or not, he was following the orders, the will of our father. Father isn't there because you failed to do what he created you to do. Your brother is dead when he shouldn't be because you were unable to do your duty prince of the host!" the Cherub mocked him.

Michael felt indignation and anger surge through him "This wasn't my fault!" he spat. How could Sandaphon dare utter those words?

"I was there with them before any of you were created! I was there with them before everything with them! I was there for millions of years with my father and my siblings! What do you know of my loss!? What do you know of my pain Sandalphon?!"

Another kick tore through his divine flesh and vaporized the lower side of his face but Michael didn't move, his angry gaze still directed at the other angel while his skin reverted to its original pristine condition.

The Cherub spoke softly yet Michael could feel an undercurrent of rage, of hatred in the voice of the other angel "I only had two things that mattered to me in this universe Michael. I had Father and I had Helel. Father was the one who created, who filled me at birth with his endless love. Helel was the one to raise me. Helel was the one who was there when I made mistakes and helped me correct them. Even though, I didn't agree and was disappointed with his tantrum, I still loved him. He was meant to be here with us and I know that was what our father planned. Why would he have let Helel keep his divine grace otherwise when he fell?"

The Cherub sighed "Honestly, I didn't begin to hate you after their death. I began hating you when you gave up on most of the empire we had created on Earth and other realms. I hate the fact that you could have destroyed the spawns of the witch Lilith who had ensnared our brother and chose not to when we could have. Billions of living beings died because of you, and billions more would again."

Something about his words felt real, different from his previous ones. Michael didn't like the certainty he could feel in them. "What kind of madness are you talking about?" he asked the Cherub.

Another voice was the one to answer him, one he hadn't heard for more than two centuries, the voice from the only true family he had left. "He doesn't lie Brother," Gabriel, his sister told him, her form floating above the ground, her eyes looking down at him.

Gabriel, the third Demiurgic Archangel, the angel who helped Sandaplhon capture him, the sister who betrayed him. She wore a celestial robe that both covered and accentuated the curves of her body. She had chosen to have the body shape of a fertility goddess with wide hips and a large chest.

The two of them looked alike, almost identical. They had the same green eyes, the same face, the same blond shade of hair. They both looked like divine beings, dolls too perfectly crafted, too perfect, masterpieces beyond concepts like beauty.

The only difference between them and why the three of them hadn't looked identical was that Gabriel preferred to take a more feminine form.

"What?" were the only words he could say. He felt too many things at the same time to be able to think logically.

"We are at war Brother with the Watcher and the twisted descendants of our brother," she spoke softly.

"How? I knew Sirzechs and Azazel. They wished for peace, for stability," he told her.

"The Vatican was attacked. Kokabiel did well in covering his track but he forgets that I am more than a seraph, that I am a Demiurgic Archangel unlike him."

"You speak of Kokabiel then why enter into war with all of The Grigori and the Underworld?" Michael asked her. He could not understand her anymore. He was able to before but he had lost the ability to do so the day their father and brother died.

"Kokabiel's plan was to provoke a war between Heaven and the Underworld and to finish off the weakened winner. I'm using it as an excuse to enter into a war with the underworld and wipe out all the defendants of Lilith. I'll eradicate the watchers in the same breath," she told him.

Horror and disgust welled up in him "You will kill billions Gabriel," he told her trying to make her understand the gravity of the actions she wanted to take.

"Don't act as if we hadn't killed millions in the name of our father without thinking, don't act as if you weren't the one with the highest body count, who created Oceans of blood Brother of mine," she told him. "Millions of lives, Billions of lives, Those are just numbers."

He tried to appeal to her logic "Do you think you can win against the combined might of two of the three monsters our brother created to match us?" he asked her.

"Ajuka and Sirzechs are just children. Even without my demiurgic abilities, sure, they would give some difficulty but I know that I'd win."

Her wings bloomed behind her exposed. They had changed Michael realized. They had lost their golden colour to take a diamond-like almost translucent shape. They looked as if they were carved from the inside to create geometrical shapes, geometrical shapes Michael was intently familiar with. "You sat on his throne," he told her hoping he was wrong.

"I did," she confirmed. "I did what you chose not to do, what you should have done."

"What you're committing is blasphemy! Worse than everything Helel did!" his voice boomed in the four walls of his prison. "Don't you remember the answer to who is like god?"

"I know the answer to your question Brother and the one equal to him is me or at least I'm becoming his equal. It's taking more time than I like but I'm coming closer and closer to what he was before he died."

"You're not the sister I loved," Michael spoke. Gabriel's eyes narrowed and he saw anger bloom in them "I should have understood this for a long time. I should have understood this when you betrayed me. I should have understood this when you helped Sandalphon."

He felt something wet his face. He touched it only to realize those were tears. The death of his twin and his brother hadn't been able to make him cry. Centuries of torture hadn't been able to make him cry. Realization and understanding were the cause of all of it.

A broken chuckle escaped him "I should have understood when I prayed when he defiled me and you didn't come. I should have understood when he forcefully mated me to those human men and women again and again, as I was defiled and you didn't come."

He saw how her eyes changed, how Her anger was replaced with sadness "I loved you brother and I always will but sacrifices for the greater good need to be made. I would have found another way if I could brother but we need your demiurgic power."

"For what?" he asked her. "For what kind of abomination would you need to let your brother, your sibling be raped!? For kind of greater purpose or blasphemy would you let any of this happen to me!?" Michael shouted at her. All of his anger bled out to be replaced with exhaustion and apathy. "You owe me at least an answer Gabriel."

She kneeled before him and cupped softly his head between her palms. She touched their forehead "I really wish things could be different brother but I need to. You have in you the power of the Demiurge. You have enough raw power inside of you to kick-start an entire multiverse. Hele was originally the only one able to shape it. God gave him the power to shape everything to his will and to warp reality. What I can do is enforce concepts. If I use my own gifts with the help of the system, I know I'll be able to harness the power of the Demiurge. I'll be able to bring Father and Helel back. Everything will be making sense again."

"But for that, you need the power of the Demiurge. Because of Lilith, I can't access mine. Is this why you've left me in the care of Sandalphon? You wanted to breed a Nephilim with the power of the demiurge," Michael realized.

Gabriel wanted to create a being equal if not superior to him that she would be able to control, to use as a tool. "What you want to do is madness. Do you know the risks of what you are doing?"

"The madness," she spoke softly "is a world without Helel and Father existing. I'll let you punish me as much as you want after I bring them back."

"Goodbye Brother. Soon, it'll be over," she whispered to him before kissing the crown of his head and fading out of reality.

"It seems that Lady Gabriel Hornblower is gone, Michael." A scalpel and a plier wrench appeared in the hand of the Cherub "Time to go back to our normal program. Like always I'll take some samples and after, we'll introduce the human. Try to make some noise, It shows me I do good work and you're still alive," the angel spoke before plunging the scalpel into one of Michael's eyeballs.