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Epilogue 2: Mainland Neel
🕑 Added 2025-09-13 00:22:20 +0000 UTCNeels Mainland, Gammorrah occupied border.
One week after Tax Day, six months after Sodom bent the knee, and a year to the day since Corrine signed her tongue and soul away to Hannya, the border tent settled with a quiet calm.
Canvas walls were filled with writings of route sigils and inventory marks. A table of blackened oak held the relief map of the battle front. Twelve chalked rings circled the Gate of Hellnia like ripples in a lake. Every town and village inside those rings wore red markings of annotation that meant the same thing to everyone present. A territory stabilized.
Outside, the camp moved with steady rhythm. Golem sentries clanked through their routes. Human quartermasters handed out ration cards beside demon cooks stirring beast and bone broth in high steel vats. The dread spider banner hung beside the gilded goat head, the silk swaying slowly in the noon breeze. It had been a hard year but a prosperous one.
Corrine’s forces had taken fast and taught even faster. Work before tribute, protection before pride. The people inside the circle still prayed to their gods if they wished. No altars had been toppled or smeared. The temples paid tax in grain and copper like everyone else, and for the first time the outlying roads stayed open for trade.
Ramsus Baphomet sat at the table with his sleeves rolled and ink in the grooves of his fingers, a habit he no longer bothered to conceal. The man had built half the camp himself with scavenged war machines and disciplined labor. He had built the factories that forged the plates on his soldiers and the cores inside the newest versions of golems. He wore no crown, only runic leathers and a sword whose sheath was etched with neat, obsessive sigils and lines.
Corrine stood to his right. Her warlock armor was void black with reactive plates that cooled or warmed when needed. Her eyes were violet with greyed sclera, they scanned the map once, then looked to the tent entrance. Her tongue tasted faintly of pact magic and iron as she pressed it to the roof of her mouth, a habit she long gained. The golden runes there hummed when she breathed. At her back a small selection of officers waited in silence. A human captain with a bandaged cheek. A red demon woman who had redesigned the ration system and never smiled. A young scribe whose hands never stopped moving over the receipts she recorded.
They had come this far by keeping the promises they made at each town. Feed the civilians first from seized stores. Post mixed patrols. Share the simple runes that made pumps work and plows dig cleaner into dry soil. Accept prayer and pilgrimage if it did not fund rebellions or raids. Respond to slurs with fines rather than whips. Take the temple champions alive whenever possible. Put their broken sabers on a wall and let their priests carry them home.
Fear hadn’t vanished, but It had softened as the days went on. Families moved through markets watched by demon sentries and learned to look past red skin the way soldiers learned to look past banners. Prosperity always had a way of sanding the cruelty off a voice.
The curtain then lifted.
Kradel kingdoms delegation filed in. No Templars in white and dark blue, instead elegantly trimmed black, red, and gold. Neels colors of men who brokered treaties and raids with equal care.
A royal party.
And at their center walked a young man with hair like glossed iron and posture like a drawn bow. He carried no spatial ring or visible weapon, which meant he had trained until he did not need to reach for one. The pin at his collar was a golden dragon’s eye over a field of black.
Arthur Drakmor, Crown Prince of the Kradel Kingdom.
They had chosen this war camp rather than a hall for this meeting. That was a message. Corrine and Ramsus let it stand.
She inclined her head. “Welcome to the border line, Your Highness.”
The prince’s eyes did not linger on Ramsus or the map. They caught on to Corrine and held. He marked the violet in her irises and the grey stain that had crept into the whites. He tracked the way her plates flexed and then settled when she stilled her breath. He did not miss the faint flicker of gold when her tongue touched her teeth.
‘A Changeling, rare.’ he thought. ‘So it’s true, pact marked. One year in, and not yet hollow. Peculiar…’
Arthur took in the rest of the tent with the caution of a man who had learned to count exits before counting men. The dread spider beneath a golden cage, the goat head of the baphamet family, the neat stacks of requisition slates to the side. He read the discipline in their disorder. He cataloged what he had been briefed on during the ride.
Kradel did not want a third front. The western beastkin tribes had grown brave under hungry skies and the dark elves were only becoming more extreme . Caravans burned. Forts taken and then reclaimed at three times the cost. The Grand Temple had pulled S rank assets toward Upper Sky, where something had gone awry near the gates.
The Inquisition was bleeding reputation and focus in the border states, which meant Kradel’s taxes were buying more sermons when they needed shields. Gomorrah’s army had not marched past the twelfth ring, twelve leagues from Hellnia’s gates. They had consolidated and built. The factories made men nervous but they also made plow teeth and pump seals. Grain had started to move again. Markets whispered that an invoice meant delivery on time.
A healthy economy was a tempting ally.
He could feel the pressure at his back. The Crown wanted a peace that could be explained to the Temple as a truce with bandits rather than a treaty with devils. The Temple wanted the Crown to spend soldiers where doctrine had failed. The princes of other houses wanted him to fail so they could draft new borders over his inheritance.
And then there was the last reason, the one no clerk dare write down.
The Gates would soon open.
He had been brought to the basements as a boy and shown the old diagrams. He had listened to a dying Arcanist say the same words every generation said before him. Not dead. Only sleeping. If devils were coming back into Neel, Kradel would not be the last kingdom to set an optional table in advance. These two had declared their ties to a Court that crowned those devils.
So the Crown decided.
Play both sides. Live between storms. Both Temple and Court.
Ramsus stood. There was no bow, he held the courtesy of basic nobility, nothing more.
“Prince Arthur.”
“Lord Baphomet.” The prince’s voice was warm without offering anything more. “Lady Corrine.”
“Commander will do.” Corrine said.
Arthur accepted the correction with a small nod. He kept his gaze on her face, even when every instinct told him to measure the golems behind the canvas. She did not look away. The air between them felt like the moment before a spear met a shield.
Finally, he folded his hands behind his back.
“Kradel sent me to talk peace.” In truth, sending the crown prince was the highest form of sincerity the crown could muster at the time; he and his delegation hoped it would leverage a positive outcome.
Ramsus gestured to the far side of the table. “Then please, sit and talk.”
They took their places. The officers fanned into their usual positions. A rotund demon butler set a tray of water and bread on the edge of the map and left without a word.
Outside, a horn sounded twice, low and patterned. A Patrol change. Inside, chalk dust settled on the twelfth ring.
Arthur tapped one finger against his palm as he studied the map. Corrine watched the small rhythm and understood what it meant. He was counting time. He wanted this finished before the Temple’s courier hawks found their courage to intervene.
Then, in this situation, she would use the wisdom of her mistress to benefit. She set her hands on the table, palms open.
“Now, after all this time… State your reasons,” she said. “Then state your terms.”
~~~
Kradel Kingdom Northwest Border. 5 miles from the gates of Aither, the upper sky.
The army held the ridge like a held breath. War machines sat in rows of iron ribs and magic lungs, boilers ticking at the helms. Mid rank heroes clustered under fluttering guild flags. A strong display… but if you looked close, you saw the tremor in gauntlets, and the way a prayer ran along a few lips as they stood at command. The Gate to Aither stood miles ahead, a gilded, moon door-like structure in the sky.
In front of the ranks, the smaller council had long since formed.
Two from the Temple. The cherub Arden, white armor clean, sigils ringing his wrists like patient orbits, and an S rank archer whose bow was strung but not raised.
Elara Brightwind.
She wore her great house crest on her sleeve and impatience between her brows. Arden’s manner was, as ever, quiet and courteous. He smiled without mockery, a habit that put steel back in lesser spines and second winds in weary chests. He had a way of making Heaven sound like a practical tool, and he had opened it before, as calm as rain. So he kept his bearings, even in a situation as… peculiar as this.
Four from the Adventurers’ Guild stood near. The lead was Martin, burly and old, an ultra greatsword riding his spine like another bone. Beside him stood a glaive weilding man with a scar that wrapped his entire left arm, a nervous knife thrower who pinched his knuckles until they went white, and a woman with a hunter’s stillness.
Three archmages from the Association, robes trimmed in school colors, eyes red with sleepless theory.
One representative from the Merchants Guild. Linus of the Hephaestus Group, a tinkerer with rune etched copper filings at his cuff and the distracted stare of a man always converting weight to leverage.
And finally the kingdom’s claw. Roderic Drakmor, second to the crown of Kradel, with royal guards in black mail and a flight of dragon riders casting long reptilian shadows on the grass below.
They did not look at the Gates first. They looked at the table in the field where a devil drank tea.
He sat in a neat white suit with an orange tie, a yellow button pinned to his breast pocket that showed a laughing face with crying eyes. His skin was pale, with purple irises hidden behind two filled stars that covered both lids and around the edges. Two more sets of stars lay at each corner of his mouth. Six in all, a face marked with supremacy. He laughed into his cup, soft and delighted, like the punchline was heating the tea itself.
“Kyokyokyo.”
Two guests shared his table as well. A blonde young woman with pointy ears and butterfly wings, blue silk pooling around her lithe body and a prismatic white crystal seated between her brow.
Clearly, a fairy, a rare sight outside the elven forests.
The other was a rabbit beastkin with snow fur, packless and bulky. A hideous, three-clawed scar draped over a blinded eye and across his nose, and a two handed hammer rested against his chair. He tried to drink with elegance, large fingers trembling to balance the cup, his hands seemed too heavy for porcelain.
The tea party blocked the road without moving.
Roderic drew a deep breath and leaned toward his general. He kept his voice low. “Is this really enough? We are dealing with a six star here.” he kept his face neutral, despite the cold sweat on his back threatening to morph his facade.
The general’s answer was a rough, resolved grunt. “It has to be. The west burns with beastkin raids and the northeast is dark with elf steel. We are stretched bone thin right now.” His gaze slid to the Temple line and sharpened. “It seems our holy friends only care when demon lords and elder bloods knock on their doors.”
Elara’s head turned at the words. She had the hearing of a hunter and a temper to match. “Maybe if the kingdom did not pick fights with every neighbor it has, our heroes would not be called to fix your messes.” Her eyes climbed to the dragon riders and stayed there. “For a family that sings about dragoons, your patrons seem quiet lately.”
The general reddened, then paled. The truth was a punch that left no bruises. The rider captain swallowed his grievances and looked away.
Rodreric, on the other hand, did not feel the blow. He was aware of their benefactors… silent treatment since he was young. He took pride in what they currently had, making contracts with dragons had waned, but they weren't gone.
Besides…
He slid his eyes southward, to where his brother moved in open secret. Arthur was no fool when it came to the Crown's dwindling influence compared to the temple and its heroes.
‘Once brother is prepared, Project Otherworlds should balance the board once again.’he let the thought drift away for another time, he would keep his composure here.
Arden set a hand on Elara’s shoulder. No pressure, just presence. “Kindly, no bickering,” he said. “This is what we could gather in the time given.” Elara blushed once at the steady look and stepped back, mouth still shaping words that decided not to make a sound. Arden let them die unspoken and faced the gathered ranks. “Reports say the devil arrived a week ago and has done nothing since. This may be a chance to settle this by words rather than charge to possible ruin.”
He was a pragmatic half-angel, a devil with the stars even angels fear was not something he would point his blade towards willingly.
A guild man snorted, the glaive tip nicking turf as he stabbed it into the soil. “Surprising from the Temple’s dogs. I thought devils were beasts to you, the same as any dungeonspawn.”
Arden’s smile held, patient and practiced. “Some think so, yes. Those heroes usually make fervent Inquisitors. The chosen.” He paused just long enough for the words to lose their shine. “Some adventurers are given a wish from a rare dungeon core and become tyrants. Neither of our nests boasts perfection.” His eyes flicked over toward the tea table. “Not all devils are unreasonable, and not all gods are kind.” The last words fell like a cloth laid over a blade.The old Adventure Martin grinned. The archmages glanced at one another. The merchant lifted his chin, filing the phrase somewhere profit outbid fear.
Before anyone could reply, Arden nodded to Elara. “Let us speak to them.”
The two S rank heroes stepped off together.
Movement flowed behind them. The Association advanced to a measured distance, familiars trailing their ankles and flanks. Linus adjusted his cuffs and walked with the quick, careful stride of a man approaching a new patent. Roderic signaled, and his guards fell into a wedge with him at the point, the dragon riders gliding above like quiet thunder.
Martin did not move at first. He watched the field the way a man gauges the steepness of a cliff. Then he hooked a thumb back without turning. “You heard the cherub. Not a colossus. Worse.”
The glaive man chewed his cheek. “You ever fought one, Marty?”
“Aye,” Martin said. “A four star. Lost most of that party. Nearly impossible to kill.”
The knife thrower winced. “Four stars. Then a six star sneezes us out of existence.”
“Maybe,” Martin said. “Never seen one. Only heard the legends.”
He rolled his shoulder and let the greatsword settle. The Adventurers shared a grin, the old joke snapping them into a single line.
“In our line of work,” Martin said, “we only believe legends after we seen em.”
They moved forward.
Roderic kept pace behind the Temple pair, eyes shifting from the table to the devil’s companions, to the rhythm of the hammering heart in his own chest.
Diplomacy had a shape. And this clearly didn’t match it. He thought of the beastkin war maps and the notations around the dark elf forests. He thought of the meeting he had left on the river with two dukes and a new scribe. He thought of his brother’s signature on a peace draft half a kingdom away. He wondered how much ink would have to burn if the devil laughed while they spoke.
Elara’s jaw clenched as they closed the distance. She saw the button on his pocket, the stupid yellow face laughing with tears in its eyes. She saw the star marks at his mouth, the ones masking his eyes. She saw the way he ignored an army to study his tea’s color. Arden lifted an open palm, a polite greeting rather than a ward.
The smiling devil, Humor, set his cup down and looked up through purple orbs.
“Oh? Guests? Kyokyokyo.” He said as if he’d just noticed.
Alice shone faintly as the sun shifted, her crystal catching seven small rainbows and breaking them across the table. The rabbit’s hand trembled as he tried to set his cup back in its little saucer and missed, porcelain clanging against wood.
The march stopped twenty paces from the table.
“Greetings,” Arden said, his voice smooth. “We represent several powers of Kradel Kingdom and the Temple. We would like to kindly ask for your purpose here?”
Humor tilted his head. His eyes glinted at the group. He smiled a bit wider but said nothing.
Behind Arden, Martin’s gaze sharpened. The old swordsman laid a hand on the greatsword’s hilt but did not draw. Elara watched his fingers tense, then drop loose again. She followed his line to Humor’s laughing pin, to the orange tie, to the lazy curve of his shoulders, to the two companions who watched like they had seen this play before.
Martin thought of letters written in tight script, each line careful as a held breath. Abigail’s words across years. The magic hero’s handwriting had never wavered, even when she confessed failure. Even when she confessed a curse. He had called the devil a rumor until the day she used the same ugly laugh in her retelling of the story to hide how her hands shook.
‘So this is the one,’ Martin thought, the old heat gone out of the words, replaced by something flatter…colder. He looked at the six stars and the calm cup and did not blink.
But it didn’t matter.
As a silk blue dress appeared before his vision, followed by flowing, golden curls.
The girl that was once sitting at the tea table, now floated before him, her face inches away. She looked down at him with innocent and curious eyes. She then smiled, a smile with the joy of a child and the dare of something far darker.
“Hello~,” She said. “I’m Alice! A pleasure, a pleasure!” She swayed and floated in the air, the wings behind her didn't move but the gravity around her made way anyway. She leaned her body closer to the old Adventurer, her eyes locked with his.
“Hey…You weren’t thinking of doing something naughty… were you~?”
The devil at the table, seeing it all, took his hand from his cup and grinned. He then glanced down at the table where an item sat in front of him.
A pitch black envelope.
A light swallowing black with a pink heart plastered on its center. Every time he looked at it, he wanted to chuckle. He read the contents and laughed for weeks.
So he decided to follow its instructions.
The thought made him laugh again. Loud and unashamed. “Kyokyokyo!” He wiped a single tear from his eye from the bout of chuckles.
“...So funny, so… Ironic.”
~~~
Aither, Grand Utopia Territory - Royal Region of Patience, Piety, and Hope.
Aither rose like holy hymns given shape. The lower grounds stretched in orderly terraces of vivid petals and living green, where minor angels kept archives and gardens and where human servants walked in structured paths. Bells chimed on every hour. No footstep strayed. At the edge of every square, monitoring statues held tablets inscribed with rank law. A scribe could greet a gatekeeper, a gatekeeper could bow to a deacon, but a human could not lift their eyes to a high ring angel. Petitioners spoke through appointed voices, and silence was a rule as real as stone.
Above the terraces drifted the royal islands, each a floating precinct bound by rings of pale clouds. Bridges of light connected the regions, and every arch displayed the sigil of its virtue. On one cluster of islands the crests of Patience, Piety, and Hope hung bright as the morning sun.
The air there was thin and clean, touched by the sound of flowing water. Courtyards opened to the sky, and pools reflected the seven small suns warming this cool breeze.
In one of those courtyards, the seven-ringed Piety paced.
She wore a white toga, simple in cut, rich in thread. Lapis blue hair fell in clean lines down her shoulders. Her eyes, the same keen lapis, burned with the pale geometry of magical workings. The spell matrix sat inside her irises like turning glass. Bags darkened the skin beneath her eyes. She hadn’t slept well in a week.
“Where is he, where is he…” she muttered, circling the fountain rim with nervous steps.
The water caught its own arcs of flow back into the basin without a ripple. Her sight did not rest on water, though, it slid over a world only she could see. She pushed her will through [Eye in the Sky] and dragged her search across Hellnia again. The mark she had left on him in Greed’s abyss had vanished as if it had never been placed.
She had sent quiet help before, placing small totems where her secret allies swore they could hide them, but Hellnia was too large, and her agents were too few. She tried again, scanning caverns, temples, and vaults, and every time her vision returned without an answer the inside of her chest tightened.
But suddenly, she turned at the sound of a voice.
“Piety.”
Her friend, Hope stood at the arch. She was small and bright, her seven halos hung so evenly they looked carved from a single ring. Her hair, white as snow, framed a face that rarely frowned. She stepped into the courtyard with a tired smile.
“Hope, how are you feeling,” Piety said, crossing the tiles in quick strides and folding her friend into a relieved hug. The joy in her voice came easy, the worry she hid came even easier.
Hope patted her back, then eased away. The bags under Hope’s eyes were worse than Piety’s, but she only shook her head. “I am fine, Piety. I just needed sleep, that is all.”
“Did you pass out last week because the path broke again?” Piety blurted, the words tripping over each other in her haste. She had assumed it. If she couldn’t find Samael with her blessing, a path break was the cleanest cause.
Hope blinked, then stepped back and shook her head. “No. The path didn’t break. I only overused my sight. The bowl is unchanged. I checked it again not too long ago.”
Piety went still. That was wrong. His vanishing should have changed the scaffolding. If a keystone slipped, the arch shouldn’t stand.
“A-are you sure?” she tried. “No extra image? An added figure? Nothing misaligned?”
Hope gave her a curious look, then a soft laugh. “That’s not how the paths of the future work, Piety.” She shook her head, amused. “If a single rock were kicked outside the designated way by an anchored soul, the path would not look almost right. It would completely collapse.”
Piety forced out a laugh to match it. “Yes, of course. I knew that, I just…” She let the sentence trail. Her eyes drifted toward the fountain, then snapped back as Hope’s sleeve sigil lit with a ripple of command.
“Ah. I must go.” Hope touched the glow with two fingers. “I wanted to see you first.” She brightened. “It seems I have been mandated to lead an Empyrean party. Organization begins today. Are you jealous?” she teased.
“...What?” Piety said, too loud. “You are joining an Empyrean party? Why? That was not in the bowl, was it?”
Hope chuckled at the edge in her friend’s voice and patted her shoulder. “Ah, don’t worry. It was likely in a grey band, a small fork connecting back. We are not all knowing.” Her tone warmed. “Besides, I have seen far enough to know we will succeed against the counter balance. I’ve seen myself back in Upper sky in the distant future.”
Piety’s mind leaped. “Your own counter balance? A bringer of despair?”
Hope nodded once, businesslike. “Humility found samples of chaotic despair in the human territory while traveling. All hands are called. We do not know what the devils fashioned behind Hellnia’s walls, and they have been secretive for a long time, moving in shadows it seems. Typical liars, busy with craft while cloaked. But we will be there to shield mortals if Neel needs us.” She smiled, untroubled by the weight of her mission. “I am also curious. I would like to see Neel with my own eyes. Perhaps the devils will stay quiet for a little longer. If they continue to keep themselves locked in Hellnia, I can travel further than the briefings ever let us.”
She turned toward the arch again, then looked back. “Tonight, let us speak more. I will bring tea.”
“Tonight.” Piety echoed with a nod.
Hope’s halos moved past pillars and vanished down the walkway with a quick, light step.
Piety stood in the old quiet. The wind touched the water, rippling the calm. Somewhere on the ground, bells rang, marking the half hour.
Her thoughts slid back to the forefront.
Vainglory was never Hope’s balance. He belonged to another line. Humility’s, at best. The Trinity currently in charge would not assign Hope to a field command if her opposite carried density any higher than her own ability. Empyrean parties were built when the threat was present but not catastrophic. That meant the traces Humility found were significant, yet expected to bend. It also meant something else. If the bowl had not changed when Samael slipped the mark, then someone had lied to the bowl, or something inside the bowl had been lied to long ago.
Piety pressed her lips thin. One gentle lie, six centuries past, had grown a forest of words that could cover Aither’s holy grounds. She had stacked each new answer to keep the first alive. She had told herself it was mercy. She had told herself it was for love. Now every branch she had grown was bending in a wind she could not feel.
Her nails found the flesh of her palm. She paced again.
The spell in her eyes lit and settled into motion. She took [Eye in the Sky] down the familiar paths. She let it skim Hellnia’s black ridges and the valleys where mist gathered. She pushed it toward caverns that used to hold beasts and toward temples that used to sell contracts. She felt for the shape she knew, for the presence that carried both pride and refusal.
Nothing. Only more distance.
Her jaw tightened. She expanded her weave, fed new angles into the search, and marked a second aim. Somewhere behind the reports Humility had carried was a devil that fit Hope’s mirror. If it was only a fragment, it still needed a name. She had to be careful of warded territories, but she would look everywhere she could.
Piety stopped by the fountain and looked into it as if it could become a window if she tried hard enough. The pool only reflected her seven rings and the web of thin glyphs that lived inside her gaze.
“Where are you…” she whispered, and the word didn’t disturb the surface.
She closed her eyes for a moment and saw his face the way she had once seen it, in a camp of young elites of every race, when she offered a gift that had not been originally hers. The name she had engraved and given him now felt like both a promise and a theft.
Her eyes opened. The matrix flared brighter.
“I’ll find you, Samael.”
Comments
Sanetless
Humor would laugh his ass off at what happens to Piety & Hope, wouldn't he?
Butch Perterson
lol she definitely contributed.
Legokill101
so piety is the reason the world is so screwed up
