~ Chapter 15: Annoyance ~

[Syliar’s point of view]

Before I went to finish off those pathetic mortals who dared to interrupt my moment of pleasure, I checked back on Michael to see if he was safe. All I had to do was stretch my presence a little bit until I touched his, however, no matter how far I stretched it, I did not get a single reply back.

“What? No!” I shouted in absolute surprise and disbelief as I rushed back into the room.

There was no sign of him here. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the planet, but such a thing would have been impossible unless an angelion was involved, and I highly doubted it could have been a technologically advanced alien species that just so happened to drop by and kidnap him for their experiments. As for the mortals of this planet, there was absolutely no chance in a freezing Hell that they could get close enough to him without me knowing about it. Thus, what I wondered now was if I was dealing with an angel or a demon?

“She’s down there!” shouted one of the human soldiers.

They must have gotten suspicious, since their comrades didn’t report back. However, what intrigued me was the fact that they called me out as a she and not a he or an it. The mortals seemed a little bit too organized. Normally, they would have sent scouts, mobilized small squads, and only then try to do something about it. In the current case, however, they seemed ready to bust in armed to the teeth at any given moment. Thanks to my expanded presence and the noises coming from outside, I found out there were quite a few of them.

Nonetheless, they were the least of my concerns, what I wanted to know was where my beloved was and who dared to take him away from me.

“Michael!” I called out to him, somehow hoping that he could reply and pinpoint the location of his kidnapper, but it was all too clear to me that he was not inside this abandoned building.

Clicking my tongue, I grabbed the biker leather suit and put it on. While doing so, I kept trying to find him by looking around and extending my presence to as far as I could without ripping apart the fragile web of reality.

Ironically though not even for a fraction of a second did it cross my mind to use the Soul Mate locator spell, the one thing I abused the heck out of in the past when I was looking for him. After getting dressed and arming myself with the two katanas, I ran out of the room and headed up on the stairs.

I found myself staring at the end of the barrel of a Howa Type 89 again. The human fired, and the bullet struck me right in the forehead. The force of the impact made me lose my balance, and I stumbled back on the stairs. It was not a pleasant fall, but the pain wasn’t that bad, maybe I deserved it for being too careless.

“Die!” I growled and then sent my demonic energy towards him.

Like two black spikes of pure hatred and death, they stabbed the human in the heart and pelvis. They went straight through him, causing the mortal to scream in pain. Alas, I had no time to see him suffer, so I made quick work of him and ripped him in half. The soldier’s blood and insides tainted three other humans behind him. They watched in horror what I did to their friend, and they knew they were going to be next on my list.

Running up the stairs, I unsheathed one katana and submerged it in my demonic energy, giving it a nice shinning black color. The infusion would make it stronger and much more powerful than it ever was before, allowing me to cut even through hard metal super alloys.

The soldiers had no time to react. My blades slashed through the air, separating their empty heads from their shoulders. Not like they were using them anyway.

“Amuga num mnamaf bugabub mumu maman.” said a human.

“What the...” I said as I looked at him.

I had to admit, I was quite surprised by him. He was wearing a Christian monk’s clothing and appeared to be chanting something from the Bible but shoot me dead if I understood even a single word he spoke, and I had a universal translator that worked even with made up languages!

Nonetheless, he was an annoyance who dared to stand in my way. I charged at him, ready to slice him in half with my swords. There was no way I could show them any sort of mercy. It would have been a bit against my very nature to show them such a thing.

Still, something was weird about this mortal.

As soon as he was just ten steps away from me, something powerful zapped me and threw me back. My body fell to the ground like a useless sack of potatoes. I groaned and steadied myself on the katanas.

“Divine shield... but how?” I asked myself as I looked at the mumbling priest.

“Mamuf mammain!” he kept chanting in his mumbling tongue.

The only way to destroy that shield was with a much more powerful demonic energy fueled by the strength of my free will. A recipe any angelion could use, but in my case, I doubted there was a human who could stand at the same level as I did.

“Die!” I screamed at him as I dashed towards the mortal.

Using my katana infused with demonic energy, I slashed at his divine shield. The first hit didn’t destroy it, forcing me to attack again. However, the very fact that I, a Demon Queen, had to do this surprised me beyond measure.

Is my strength fading for some reason? I asked myself.

I didn’t know, but I didn’t have time to test it out.

With the second strike, the shield was down, and the mumbling monk was left to my mercy of which there was none to give.

“Mamufa!” he screamed one last time as I stabbed my hand into his chest and then pulled out his still beating heart.

I squashed it in my hand and saw his soul leave his mortal shell. In that moment, however, I noticed something on it. He had an angelion symbol on his chest, but not just anyone, a demonic empowering symbol. This could mean only one thins… One of my own was behind these unnatural occurrences in this Universe.

“Who dares? WHO DARES?!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, but the only reply I got was a barrage of tank shells straight to my face.

“AAA!!!” I screamed in pain as I felt my body suffering from the extensive damage caused by those strikes.

The building shook, but by some miracle only a part of it crumbled down, the one that would affect only me.

Now, buried under the concrete aftermath of the attack, I struggled to push back a piece of the ceiling that just so happened to fall on top of me. I doubted it was natural. There were signs of demons causing trouble all over the place, the same ones who followed us on the streets. Although none was here, their work remained. The building would not last much longer.

“Clear!” shouted a human.

I wondered through what means they were planning to attack me next, but the answer came shortly in the form of a jet of flames washing up the entire area, burning to a crisp any flammable material in sight and setting ablaze the entire structure.

“AAA!” I screamed as I felt the heat licking my skin, melting it off.

Only my quick thinking pulled me out of this mess as I raised my demonic energy around my form and then dashed out of the inferno. In a way, I found it ironic for humans to try to cook a demon from Hell, but then again, my host was human and thus vulnerable to their attacks.

“SHOOT!” shouted a human and once more I found myself struck by a barrage of projectiles just as I was about to leave the building.

The priests continued to chant faster and louder. I could feel the pressure of divine energy as it tried to force me to relinquish my host and send me back to my kingdom. I refused to let myself submit to their pathetic force.

Getting myself out of the rubble, I pushed aside the flames with the help of my demonic energy, which acted as a shield around me. Those mortals were seriously underestimating me, and I was in no mood to play their little games.

“Grrr!” I growled and focused my demonic energy in my host.

Changes occurred and brought to light more of my demonic self as well as healing any recent wounds. Now, my host’s eyes were completely red, and a sharp curved claw adorned each finger on both hands. My skin turned darker in color to the point where my cheeks, hands, and feet had turned black like charcoal. I hissed from the pain of my transformation as well as the shivers of delight of the torture my host’s body was currently going through. It was a weird, nearly paradoxical sensation. My host felt pain, but so did I, yet I enjoyed only her pain, not mine.

The whole process lasted no more than a minute or so, but when it ended, where once stood the winged human, now stood a demonic being with bright-red eyes, a sinister look on her face and a taste for blood. That was my new form, and I liked it.

With a wide smirk all the way to my ears, I looked upon the mortals who dared to cause me harm and forced me to change. There were a lot of these pathetic primitives around me, and my demonic eyes could see them all so clearly. The beautiful, seductive pulse of life let me know where all of them laid hidden. None could escape me now, and my lust for blood couldn’t wait to rip out their hearts and squash them between my clawed fingers.

Energies of all kinds danced before my eyes, the old spirits of that place feared my presence, yet their bonds to their place of death denied them the right to flee from my sight. I cared not for them, though.

Licking the tip of my lips, I looked at the souls of the nearest mortals and prepared myself to hunt and feast. They had no idea what was coming towards them, and those pathetic priests were as of yet unaware of how weak their attacks were going to be against me.

I dashed forward, moving at a speed faster than the human eye could see. The flames didn’t even touch me now, they flowed over the demonic energy field covering my body like water would around an Olympic swimmer.

“Sir! Where is she?” asked one of the soldiers who kept dousing in flames the debris of the building.

“Beats me, just keep shoo...” the mortal’s words were cut short as my claws slashed open his throat.

I jumped on his chest, and with my other hand, I grabbed his head and pulled as hard as I could. His muscles and bones were no match for my strength, resulting in his savage decapitation. Now, I had another weapon, a truly grotesque one.

After infusing the head with demonic energy, I threw it far away from me at a Bell AH-1 Cobra Attack Helicopter flying above the neighborhood. The pilot did not even know what hit him. As soon as the head touched the helicopter, it exploded with the force of 1 kg of C4, severely damaging the aircraft and instantly killing the pilot. What could I say? I had a good aim.

With a smirk on my lips, I did not wait to gaze upon the havoc the machine would cause upon crashing into a nearby civilian building, I jumped from where I stood, landing on the shoulders of the closest enemy and broke his neck. From there, I pointed my hand at one of the many groups of soldiers aiming their Howa Type 89 Assault Rifles at me. Concentrating a bit of demonic energy into an explosive blast, I let it loose upon them and then moved towards my next target, a Type 90 Main Battle Tank.

Like a lizard sneaking back into its hole, I entered the machine of war and began my merciless slaughter of the crew. Blood painted in red the insides of the tank. With a giggle, I jumped at its commands and with the use of my demonic energy, I loaded the cannon and aimed it at another Type 90. Before they had the chance to realize what happened to their comrades, I pressed the trigger. The cannon fired and the blast penetrated my target’s armor, but it was not enough to destroy it. I needed another shot, but by now the other four nearby tanks released their shells upon me. The damage my tank suffered was critical and forced me out of there.

Once I was out, I realized what was happening around me. Nine Bell AH-1 Cobra Attack Helicopters were on standby with their weapons aimed, armed, and ready to fire at me. Seven Type 90 Main Battle Tanks roamed the streets of the area, waiting for the right moment to aim their barrels at me and let loose a rain of shells upon my location. More than one thousand soldiers occupied the entire area, taking cover or moving in groups; more were to come. But even more surprisingly, I could see among them Yakuza and priests. They took aim at me with military-grade weapons or whatever they had on hand. Still, it was very strange to see them there, but maybe not as strange as those priests and exorcists from various churches and shrines in the capital. All of them chanted and spoke in words of the divine. The angelion magic flowed all over the place, creating seals and all sort of effects on the weapons used by both the Yakuza and the military.

Most likely, those were the cause of their apparently overwhelming fire power. Still, I found it strange for it to be so. Normally, the humans who had access to that level of angelion magic could be found only in either a spiritually evolved dimension or in a highly spiritual solar system that evolved alongside a strong concentration of manifested divine energy, but I highly doubted we were in either one of them. No matter the case, the amount of energy consumed, the sheer number of destinies changed from their natural course, all of those weren’t something the angels would have allowed to happen. Therefore, it had to be the work of a demon.

When the thought crossed my mind, I realized who I was actually facing there. Those mortals had nothing to do with their current predicament, they were being used. Their darkness was so amplified they could barely withhold their animalistic and murderous desires. A fallen angel was not able to induce a state so warped by chaos and darkness. But no matter how much I enjoyed it, I knew it was not the type of game I wanted to play unless I wanted to battle God’s armies.

“Tch!” I clicked my tongue and flew up in the air.

“Where are you Severus?! Get your lousy ass out here! I command you by the order of the Demon Queen ruling over this Kingdom!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

“My, my! Aren’t you a delightful queen? With what may I be of service?” asked the rotten demon as he finally came out of his hiding hole.

In that moment, I could feel Michael’s presence again. No doubt the Demon Lord held him hostage all this time.

“What is the meaning of this, Severus?” I asked as I pointed at all the humans who aimed their weapons at me.

They weren’t shooting for some reason, no doubt that ingrate demon ordered them to hold fire.

“Nothing. I just merely wish to remind you of something.” he said and just then, I saw his demonic self-vanishing and then appearing behind me. “You are weak.” he whispered.

Something pushed through my back and popped out through my chest. It was a demonic sword made from the Demon Lord’s energy. I did not sense it and as such, I was not able to block it. The blade cut through my human host’s body with an exceptional ease.

My host was dying...

“MUHAHAHA!” he laughed as he released a blast of energy into my back.

The demonic force threw me into the ground, and before I had a chance to raise a shield, he released his relentless attack on me. Blast after blast struck my body, burning my flesh and crushing my bones, pushing my host to the brink of death where not even my demonic energy could keep her alive.

“DIE!” shouted the demon.

This was it...