Lillene
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Chapter 893 - In Person
🕑 Added 2023-10-24 04:59:13 +0000 UTCFeeling a little better. Slept basically all day. Still sick.
Enjoy!
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Serenity was a little surprised he hadn’t heard from the Voice about this the way he’d heard about the “Tokens of Terror” on Asihanya. The Voice handed that quest out with restrictions, so it couldn’t just be because the Voice was trying to keep things quiet. If it was watching for Apollyon the way he seemed to think it was, Serenity should have gotten a quest by now and he hadn’t.
Maybe the Voice was waiting until it could send in outsiders, but Serenity didn’t believe that. He also didn’t believe that it wouldn’t hand him the Quest directly if it needed to; it had more than proven that it could. No, those possibilities didn’t seem plausible. It was far more likely that whatever Apollyon ran from didn’t have the Voice backing it up. It was also likely that whatever it was wasn’t looking anymore; it had clearly been a very long time.
Actually, that was a good question to ask. “Are you certain anyone’s still looking for you? It’s been thousands of years. Is there even someone out there who still cares?”
“Of course there is!” Apollyon sounded indignant. “Phorus set me up to take the blame for his actions, for destroying half a world. I’ll never be free of that stain as long as he lives; he’ll protect himself by hunting me!”
Serenity snorted. That sounded like Apollyon was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince Serenity. “Then perhaps you’ll be happy to know that he’s dead. He died a long time ago, from what I can tell.” Serenity shook his head as he sorted through the little solid information he had on the former Councilor. “He left a lot of caches in different places full of powerful but dangerous stuff, enough that his mark is called the Claw of Doom. It’s best left alone.”
At least, that was the case on Asihanya. Serenity suspected it was true on other planets as well; Vengeance had never really cared about myths but he did vaguely remember that some of the ruins he’d encountered over the years had that same sort of “powerful but even more dangerous” reputation.
Apollyon started to laugh. He continued laughing for several minutes while Serenity quietly waited, then started investigating the room he was in. It was very similar to the ones he’d already completely checked out, but he didn’t want to leave until he was done talking to Apollyon. It still seemed unlikely that they’d reach an agreement, but he wasn’t going to completely abandon the possibility.
Once Apollyon finally calmed down, Serenity grinned at the camera. “I take it you’re not upset by the news.”
“Hah. No.” Apollyon paused for a moment before continuing, “We should talk in a more comfortable setting. I’ll send someone to guide you.”
Serenity hoped that was good news; at a minimum, it sounded like Apollyon wasn’t about to immediately attack. He still wanted to be ready in case he did need to fight his way out, but for now everything seemed positive.
It was only a couple of minutes before the door opened and revealed a young man that was positively covered in Night Fire, far worse than what Serenity saw on A’Atla. Serenity had to suppress his initial reaction to do something about it. Unlike on A’Atla, there was no reason to assume that this was an attack.
Serenity was fairly confident he hadn’t hidden his surprise but the young man didn’t comment on it. “There is someone here! Come on, I’m supposed to lead you to the boss’s rooms.”
That sounded hopeful.
Serenity followed the young man through the building, outside, and into another building. The new building reminded Serenity of an apartment complex or maybe a hotel, but he didn’t get to see much of it. He was led to an elevator, which surprisingly went down instead of up. Serenity guessed he probably should have expected that; underground was easier to defend. He doubted this was the only entrance.
The hallway the elevator opened onto was plain; Serenity could have seen one just like it in dozens of hotels he’d been to over the years. The only indication that he was underground was the lack of windows. The guide led him to the right, past several unmarked doors. The hallway ended in a single door that looked like the others except that there was a steel plaque about four inches across with the image of a grasshopper etched onto it.
On second thought, that was probably a locust. Serenity still couldn’t tell the difference.
The young man opened the door and ushered Serenity into a room that didn’t match the door. The ceiling was roughly twenty feet high; light came from recessed spots in the ceiling. The floor was tiled in a dark slate, which contrasted with the pale tiles on the wall and ceiling. The only furniture in the room was seven plush chairs, which were grouped into a set of three and a set of four.
There was a door in each of the walls. The two on the sides were larger than standard, roughly double the size of a normal door in all dimensions with a handle that was proportionate. The one directly opposite the one he’d entered from was a pair of doors that stretched up to close to the ceiling and took up most of the wall they were on; at a guess, they were probably eighteen feet tall and twelve or fifteen feet wide. All of the doors were wooden with metal hardware and all were unadorned; clearly you were supposed to know what was there before you went past them.
“Please wait here.” The young man stepped back outside and closed the door.
Serenity restrained himself from touching any of the portal tokens he’d brought. He didn’t need to touch them to know they were there and it was better not to let anyone watching him on camera know where they were. They thought he’d come alone and that was the way he wanted it to look unless he needed help or an escape route.
He could feel a slight increase in the ambient magic level as he walked farther into the room. It still wasn’t like being in a ley line or a dungeon, but it was definitely higher than the norm. Serenity wasn’t certain what caused it. There were a number of options; a damaged enchantment could do it, or an enchantment that was working properly and designed to locally increase the magic level, or even something natural like a mana pool. Natural variations in mana happened, especially on higher-Tier worlds; perhaps they were starting to appear on Earth. They might even have always been there and simply been too small to notice. That wasn’t that unusual on low Tier worlds.
Serenity cast a glance around the room; he was certain he was being monitored, even if he couldn’t see the cameras. They could be almost anywhere, though he guessed that the room being tiled probably made it more difficult. He shrugged internally, then picked one of the chairs; there was no point in being uncomfortable while he waited. This could easily be a power play of some sort, an attempt to make him uncomfortable or impress him with Apollyon’s power or position by making him wait even though he was invited.
It was almost exactly five minutes after Serenity sat down that the large door to the right opened and a figure that was sized appropriately for the door entered the room. Apollyon was oddly proportioned, almost stretched looking; in proportion, he reminded Serenity of the vision he’d seen of his great-grandfather as a “pureblood Suras” in the Well of Souls. The largest differences were Apollyon’s skin color, which was a deep red, almost purple, and his horns, which shaded from purple at the base through a fiery red and into an orange at the tips. They swept around the sides of his head in something like a circlet instead of rising almost straight up to a silver point the way Serenity’s did.
There was no question that he was a demon lord. Serenity could smell it the moment the door opened. It was strong enough this time that Serenity could tell that it wasn’t a proper scent; instead, it was more like a mana signature. In fact, it probably was part of Apollyon’s mana signature. Serenity wondered if his own had changed; he hadn’t noticed, but mana signatures did change with time and experience.
“There’s no need to pretend,” Apollyon opened. “You are a child of Wrath, that much is obvious. Be proud of who you are; you do not need to hide here.”
Apollyon was asking him to shapeshift, wasn’t he? Serenity considered the option; it had more downsides than upsides at a first glance. He was prepared to fight in the form he was in; this was the form where all of his tools were handy, including his portal tokens. He had some on the other side of his Rift just in case, but those would take longer to retrieve. If he shifted, all he’d have would be what he’d had in that form the last time he was in it, which wasn’t much.
He could probably manage to keep the two secondary forms he was using, his armor and crystal hilt, but that was all. It was too bad his pockets were in the regular clothing he wore over his armor-self; if he actually figured out how to incorporate pockets into his armor-self, he’d be able to keep what was in them. Now that he thought about it, that was definitely something he needed to practice; he could make his armor-self look like all sorts of different types of armor. Why couldn’t he make it look like clothing as well? That would be useful.
It wasn’t something to try for the first time in front of an enemy. It might work, but it was even more likely to go wrong. Looking silly was fine, revealing the precautions he might have to use later was not.
There were some advantages to his larger Arcane Asura form, however, it would match Apollyon in height and more than match him in weight, which was useful in a fight. Both mass and reach could be important; even without some of the tricks he’d prepared, the fight might be easier if he were larger. The one thing he wouldn’t be able to do was run quickly, since he wouldn’t be able to have Ita open an immediate portal.
He would, however, be able to kill Apollyon. Now that the demon stood in front of him, Serenity could tell that Apollyon was less powerful than Serenity expected. He felt like a dying ember, someone who once shone bright and powerful but now was little more than heat and potential. Even so, he was similar in strength to Serenity at the moment, certainly close enough for the Incarnate of Death to kill with a spell that could kill stars. He’d have to go for the kill immediately in a fight, but it could be done.
Beyond the possibility of a fight, if shifting helped him bring Apollyon over to his side, that was probably better than killing him. Serenity was less sure than ever that that was possible; there was no way he was going to allow Apollyon to move forward with the spell he had planned and he suspected that wasn’t ground Apollyon was willing to yield on. Peace was worth trying for but it wasn’t worth that price.
Serenity sighed to himself; he’d already made the decision, hadn’t he? He’d walked in here planning to talk. Shifting stripped him of some of his contingencies but not of the most important ones. Serenity got to his feet and carefully balanced his shapeshift to preserve the fact that he was in three forms; shifting three forms at once so that his armor and sword selves adapted to his larger body was difficult but it was something he’d had time to practice.
Huh. He was taller than Apollyon now.
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Author's Note: Apollyon clearly knows a lot about demons. Of course, he should if he’s one of the people who designed them. I wonder why he smells like a demon lord (and thinks of himself as one). Is there something important he hasn’t mentioned?
