POV: Ravel Phenex
Puritas Aeterna.
Eternal Purity.
Ravel admired the peculiar genius of giving atrocities beautiful names. There was something almost artistic about it. Murder was such an ugly little word, blunt as a butcher's cleaver and possessing roughly the same elegance. Puritas Aeterna, meanwhile, sounded positively lovely. It might have been the name of an ancient hymn, or a particularly expensive perfume marketed to noblewomen.
Eternal Purity. How very clean. How very noble. How wonderfully free of any suggestion that thousands of people were going to die.
Ravel supposed that was the point. Devils had always had a knack for presentation. They could tolerate torture, slavery, assassination, and apparently extermination, but vulgar terminology was where civilized society drew the line. One did not announce that one intended to butcher the Reincarnated Devils. One announced a purification initiative, preferably in Latin, because Latin was classy. Ravel wondered whether the first corpse would appreciate the distinction.
Perhaps someone ought to explain it while they were killing him. Do try to understand, sir, you are not being murdered. You are being eternally purified. It seemed only courteous.
And there lay the exquisite little irony. Aeterna. Eternal. The architects of the project spoke obsessively of eternity while preparing to ensure that an entire people possessed as little of it as possible. Ravel almost admired the joke. Devils had always been rather talented at irony, usually without realizing it.
"Please, don't make any sudden movements, Lady Asia," Ravel whispered, keeping her voice low as she concentrated upon the concealment spell stretched around them. "My talent with concealment magic is somewhat above average, but maintaining it over both of us still requires a great deal of concentration. If you move too suddenly or disturb the spell, there is a very real chance that we'll be caught."
"I understand," Asia whispered, so softly that Ravel nearly forgave her for being the reason they were here.
The incomprehensibly pure little nun had, through what could only be described as an act of pure madness, decided that entering the Underworld during a civil war was a sensible course of action. Ravel pointed out the obvious objections: There was, firstly, a massive civil war underway.
Secondly, Rizveim was a murderous lunatic with a particular hatred for humanity and Heaven. Thirdly, they had discovered after arriving that said murderous lunatic had authorized Puritas Aeterna - an organized extermination of Reincarnated Devils whose principal qualification for death appeared to be having once possessed the misfortune of being human.
That last development could not fairly be counted against Asia's original decision, since neither of them had known about it beforehand, but it was the principle of the matter. One did not willingly climb into a pit of poisonous snakes and then complain when some of the snakes turned out to be especially venomous.
Ravel had asked her before they came why entering the Underworld was necessary at all when there was nothing here connected to their actual purpose. They were supposed to be searching for Haruki Yamashiro, and Ravel was quite sure Haruki was nowhere in the Underworld. Asia had listened quietly before answering with that gentle smile of hers, though there had been sadness beneath it when she explained what had changed her mind.
"I couldn't simply continue searching for Haruki after seeing that recording," Asia had told her. "I saw what they were doing to that Devil child, Ravel. I saw what those men did to her, and afterward I tried to pray and… think about what we should do next, but every time I closed my eyes I saw her face again. I can't know something like that is happening and simply continue with my own life as though I never saw it."
"Of course, you can," Ravel had replied. "People do it constantly. Civilization would collapse by noon if everyone personally intervened in every horror they learned about before breakfast."
Asia had looked at her with such quiet disappointment that Ravel had immediately regretted the remark, which was irritating because she was 100% sure it was perfectly sensible.
"And there is another reason," Asia continued. "Think of it as the beginning of atonement for a man who refuses to atone."
Ravel had stared at her. "You intend to atone on someone else's behalf?"
"I intend to prepare somewhere for him to begin…You told me yourself that Haruki has become extraordinarily powerful," Asia had explained when Ravel questioned her. "Even before that happened, finding him when he didn't wish to be found was difficult. Now I suspect it would be impossible. We could search every country and every realm we can reach, and if Haruki truly wanted to avoid us, we would find nothing except the places he had already left behind. As long as he is consumed by whatever purpose he has chosen, he will continue until he reaches its end. By then, I fear he will believe it is too late."
"Too late for what?"
"For himself."
Ravel could not help but feel jealous of how confidently Asia spoke about Haruki; knowing him well enough to draw such conclusive judgments about his state of mind was supposed to be her job, after all, as his eternal servant, yet somehow this little nun seemed to understand her master better than she did.
"Haruki is stubborn," Asia had said. "There is a fire in him that consumes everything he gives it, including himself, and when he believes something must be done he will endure almost anything before abandoning it. Please believe me when I tell you that he is not a bad person, Ravel. I know what that sounds like after everything that has happened. He left your nation broken and exposed to enemies who were waiting for the chance to tear it apart. He has hurt people who loved him, and perhaps he has done things even I do not know about. I still believe there is a reason behind what he is doing. I don't know whether that reason will excuse him. I only know Haruki well enough to believe that he has one."
"I don't think he is monstrous," Ravel had protested. "By what right does someone like me judge a being of his caliber? Power gives a person the ability to impose his will upon the world, and there is no objective force that reaches down afterward to declare every action good or evil. There is power, there is the will to act, and there are the consequences that follow from it. Haruki had the strength to act, and so he did."
Asia had sighed and shaken her head. "Come now, Ravel. Even you don't believe that."
Ravel had remained quiet, and Asia continued before she could answer.
"Haruki has a good heart beneath all that cynicism and whatever purpose has consumed him." Asia had said with an exhausted sigh. "I think he has convinced himself that everything he has done was necessary, because if there were another path then he would have to accept that some of the suffering he caused could have been avoided. Perhaps he truly had no other path. I can't judge that until I know what he's trying to accomplish. I know something else, though.
"He is unhappy. Whatever victory waits for him at the end of this will not make him happy. When he finally stops moving long enough to look behind himself, he will see every person he hurt along the road, and then I fear he will decide there can be no forgiveness for him. Then he will decide that forgiveness is impossible, because Haruki would rather endure punishment than he can ask for mercy. He will convince himself that suffering quietly is the honest price of what he has done, and because he is clever, he will find a thousand excellent arguments explaining why he deserves it."
"And you intend to lay the groundwork for his atonement?" Ravel had asked.
"Yes."
"Why would he need to atone?" Ravel had demanded, that part still offended some Devilish instinct within her. "No serious Devil would condemn him for winning. Half the surviving nobility would probably build statues if they thought doing so would place them on the favorable side of his attention. Power excuses a lot in the Underworld."
"I'm not speaking about the Devils."
"Then whose forgiveness matters?"
"His own." Asia had lowered her eyes then, and when she spoke again the softness of her voice had somehow made Ravel listen more carefully. "The guilty flee when no man pursueth. Whatever reasons he had, he repaid people who cared for him with grief and blood, and that knowledge will remain after every battle is finished. I think he believes those bridges are burned forever. Perhaps some are. Perhaps there are wounds that will never heal completely. But if he comes to believe there is no road back from anything he has done, then every terrible choice becomes easier to make afterward. A man who thinks himself beyond redemption has very little reason to fear becoming worse."
Ravel had studied her for several moments before asking, "So you intend to rebuild those bridges for him?"
"No," Asia had answered, and for once there had been firmness beneath the gentleness. "No one can do that for Haruki. He must decide which bridges he wishes to rebuild, and the people on the other side must decide whether they are willing to meet him. I can only help clear the first stones from the road. I want him to know that atonement remains possible, that he doesn't have to carry everything alone, and that redemption doesn't disappear because someone has accumulated enough sins to make the work difficult."
"And this… explains why you want to walk into the middle of the Underworld during a civil war?"
"Both for my conscience and for his," Asia had said. "Atonement should begin where the harm was done. Haruki's actions have brought suffering here on a scale I can't measure, and now others have taken advantage of that suffering to commit horrors of their own. I can't undo what he did, and I can't accept responsibility for crimes that belong to other people, but I can help those who are bleeding now. If someday Haruki looks back upon the Underworld and sees only blood attached to his name, I want there to be something else there too, however small. A life protected. A wound healed. I can begin that work even if he's not ready to begin it himself."
Ravel had thought the entire philosophy dangerously sentimental, strategically deranged, and so perfectly Asia that arguing against it felt increasingly pointless. There was no certainty that Haruki would ever know what she had done, nor that he would welcome it if he learned, and no assurance that any of it would ease whatever guilt Asia believed he carried. Asia seemed to understand all of that perfectly well. She had come anyway.
Now, crouched beneath a concealment spell in hostile territory while soldiers marched past in search of people whose deaths had been dignified with a Latin title, she found herself forced to admit that the nun had at least been consistent. Asia had seen suffering and come toward it. Ravel, who considered herself considerably more sensible, had somehow followed her. There was probably a lesson buried in that somewhere, but Ravel preferred not to examine it while maintaining a spell upon which their continued possession of heads depended.
She watched as the devils searched the houses one by one.
Ravel had heard of the Old Satan Faction all her life, though for most of that life they had existed in the same distant category as the monsters in children's stories, names best left buried in the past. They were descendants and loyalists who had lost the last civil war and never accepted the settlement that followed, men and women who had spent decades licking their wounds and seething with resentment, waiting in the shadows for the slightest crack through which they might pour their long-hoarded vengeance.
Every Pillar House that had opposed them understood perfectly well what would follow if they ever returned to power. Ravel had grown up knowing that much, and there had never been any illusion within House Phenex that reconciliation would come easily if the Old Satan Faction ever gained control of the Underworld again.
But even the most pessimistic members of those old devils who still remembered the civil war and distrusted every surviving descendant of the original Satans, could scarcely have predicted Aeterna Puritas.
She and Asia had learned of it shortly after entering the Underworld, when a devil attacked them upon the road and Ravel defeated him easily enough before extracting the information from him. The Prince of Hell had declared reincarnated devils and half-breeds unworthy of bearing the name of devil, impurities whose continued existence profaned the blood of Hell, and therefore every one of them was to be eradicated.
Then he had made a game of the slaughter. Any pure-blooded devil could kill a reincarnated devil or half-breed on sight, take the scalp as proof, and present it to the authorities for rewards of wealth and prestige. Every passing day taught another ordinary devil how little effort was required to turn another person into a reward.
Her hand was trembling. The concealment barrier surrounding herself and Asia flickered faintly along its edge, and she tightened her fingers while forcing her concentration back into the spell.
She kept Asia close beside her, hidden behind the ruined wall of what had once been a bakery, while smoke drifted through the village square and settled into her throat with every breath. She knew this village. It lay outside Phenex territory and was never important enough that would have earned it a place on political maps, but Ruval had loved coming here when they were children and had sometimes brought Ravel along when his responsibilities allowed it.
The village lord had been a reincarnated devil named Marcellus Wallace, a human musician before reincarnation, eventually rising to High-Class through merit and using his wealth to build something devil society rarely valued - a settlement for people who wanted nothing greater than an ordinary life. Marcellus disliked courts and every other contest through which devils measured importance. He had wanted orchards, farms, beer brewed badly enough that everyone argued about it, and music loud enough to carry from one end of the village to the other during festivals. His subjects had included reincarnated devils, low-class pure-bloods, farmers, retired servants of noble houses, and families who had simply grown tired of living beneath someone else's ambitions.
Ravel remembered summer evenings beneath strings of lanterns, children chasing one another between long wooden tables while musicians played beneath the old fig tree in the square, and Marcellus himself sitting among commoners with his boots muddy from the vineyards.
She remembered a woman named Marta who sold honey cakes and always added an extra one to Ravel's basket because she said noble girls were too thin. People had laughed here. That had been enough.
Now the fig tree had burned down to a blackened trunk, the bakery roof had collapsed inward, and the square where Ravel remembered music was filled with prisoners.
Sixty-six soldiers stood around the villagers in matching dark armor, each wearing a red armband marked with three sixes arranged into the symbol now associated with the Beasts, one of the Prince's enforcement formations whose reputation had spread quickly since Aeterna Puritas began.
Several buildings were still burning behind them, and the smell of wet ash mixed with blood and broken stone while families had been forced into the central square beneath armed guard.
Ravel counted forty reincarnated devils stripped to the waist and chained together beneath the raised dais at the far end of the square, their bodies bruised, cut, and burned from interrogation, while the rest of the townspeople stood surrounding them under the eyes of soldiers.
Some were pure-blooded. That much was obvious from the way the soldiers had separated them from the prisoners. They had hidden their reincarnated neighbors anyway. Ravel could see the evidence everywhere, trapdoors ripped from cellar floors, barns opened with explosives, and for one brief moment pride pierced through her horror.
The village had tried. These people, who possessed little military power and no great lord standing over them, had risked themselves to conceal neighbors whose blood had suddenly become a capital offense. The effort had failed, and now the soldiers intended to make failure exemplary.
One of the officers climbed onto the dais and produced a black crystal from beneath his cloak, holding it high until magic spread across its surface and projected an enormous image above the square.
Ravel's attention moved toward it almost unwillingly. The figure that appeared was unlike any devil she knew. He was enormous even within the projection, pale and entirely hairless, and great heavy limbs smooth in a manner that gave him something of the appearance of a gigantic infant stretched into the proportions of a grown man, though there was nothing childlike in the grin fixed across his face.
The moment his eyes seemed to settle upon the square, Ravel stopped breathing. She understood rationally that he was not physically present. Her body did not care. Terror clawed at her, and she felt her heartbeat striking harder against her ribs while every part of her mind insisted upon stillness.
Whoever this being was, the scent of war and death followed his wake. Ravel had encountered Ultimate-Class devils and monsters whose power could have reduced the village to dust, but the figure on the screen carried a pressure she had never experienced before, something vast and malignant that seemed to look through the people gathered beneath him and find them wanting.
"Look upon them!" the pale devil thundered, his voice rolling across the square through the magical projection. "Look upon this... this walking blasphemy, this rot that you have coddled in the warm, dark folds of your silence! You thought yourselves clever, did you not? You thought the shadows of this miserable mud-heap could shield the defiled from the gaze of the morning star? A town of liars, acting as a womb for tumors!"
The chained prisoners remained silent beneath him, though Ravel saw one older man close his eyes as if shutting out the sound could preserve some final piece of dignity.
"Do you understand what you have hidden among yourselves?" the projection continued. "Skin-walkers, false pagans walking in a hollowed-out inheritance that belongs only to the primordial fires. To call them our kin is to say the dung-beetle is brother to the dragon! They are a plague of locusts wearing masks of obsidian, a mock-show, a carnivalesque distortion of the original majesty! And you..."
Ravel felt Asia shift beside her and tightened her fingers around the girl's wrist before she could move.
"...you, the miserable flock of this province," the pale devil said, the grin never leaving his face. "You have shielded the blight! By the ancient laws of the pit, to harbor the unclean is to become the unclean. You have looked upon the decree of your sovereign and chosen instead to suckle the leper. Did you think the wrath of Rizevim was a distant thunder? I tell you today, his fury is a living thing! It is an insatiable maw, and you have volunteered your children to feed it!
"For this transgression, there is no negotiation. There is no coin, no prayer, no weeping that can wash the stain of this treason from your doorsteps. Every hand that fed them, every tongue that kept their secret shall be smitten! We shall plow your fields with salt and brimstone, and we shall plunge every disobedient soul in this valley into the deep, unyielding, fiery pit where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched! Drag the false-blooded meat to the center. Let them watch their protectors burn first, so they may know the weight of the doom they brought upon this world!"
The projection vanished, but the crushing pressure it had brought with it remained, lingering in the air as though the presence itself had never truly left.
For several seconds Ravel stood frozen, staring at the empty space where the pale face had hung while the concealment barrier shivered around her fingertips. The officer upon the dais smiled and drew his sword.
One of the soldiers seized a middle-aged villager from the crowd, a pure-blooded devil whose face Ravel vaguely remembered from years ago, though the memory refused to sharpen beneath the fear flooding through her. He was dragged forward and forced to his knees while the officer raised the blade above his neck.
"Stop it!"
The cry tore through the square. Ravel needed a second to understand where it had come from. Asia was gone from beside her. Ravel's heart seemed to seize as she saw the nun running into the open square, leaving the concealment spell entirely and pushing through the frightened villagers while calling desperately toward the soldiers.
Asia, why can you never leave anything alone?
Ravel dropped the concealment spell and moved before she had consciously decided to do so.
The officer turned toward Asia with open disbelief, and then his expression changed as he sensed what she was.
"A human?" he said, lowering his sword as disgust settled over his features. "A human has no place here, especially one carrying Heaven's stench into our realm. Die!"
He moved toward her, and Ravel moved before she had time to decide anything. Ravel released fire and wind together. The blast struck the officer squarely and launched him across the square with enough force to carry him through the wall of a burned house, sending broken masonry outward through a cloud of dust and embers. For a fraction of a second Ravel hoped the strike had bought them enough time to run.
Ravel landed beside Asia with her wings already spread, placing herself between the girl and the soldiers while power gathered around her hands.
The officer rose again, badly burned along one side of his armor and bleeding from the mouth, his expression twisted with rage. Ravel's heart sank. Seven definite High-Class devils stood among the soldiers, and there might have been others concealing their strength.
She could fight one. Perhaps two, if circumstances favored her and she committed everything. The chained reincarnated devils were in no condition to help, and none of the villagers she could sense possessed enough power to alter the balance.
The officer lifted his weapon again, and demonic power gathered around the broad head of an axe one of his companions tossed toward him.
"Traitorous scum!" he snarled. "The prince of hell has finally seen fit to cleanse your filthy kind from our noble race. No impure blood shall taint this realm. Step aside, Phenex wench, or perish beside them with your human pet."
Asia moved beside Ravel despite Ravel's attempt to keep her behind her.
"I'm not a pet, my name is Asia Argento and I will not step aside!" She said, her voice shaking now though she forced herself to continue. "I will not stand by and see innocents butchered for no crime. God granted me the miracle of healing to preserve life, not to stand idle while it is cruelly extinguished!"
The soldier threw back his head and laughed. "Would you look at that? A nun is protecting a devil! Your God has no power here nor anywhere else now that he is dead. Keep praying if it comforts you, because you'll be meeting Him shortly."
Damn it, Asia. Why could you not leave them?
Ravel raised both hands and gathered every layer of defensive magic she could form quickly enough. She knew she could probably block the first strike. If she created enough confusion afterward, perhaps she could seize Asia and flee before the other soldiers surrounded them, though the thought of abandoning the villagers turned sour inside her even as she calculated the necessity.
The axe descended.
A black dagger crossed the square. The weapons struck with a violent metallic clang, sparks bursting outward as the axe was knocked from its path and buried itself in the ground several feet from Asia.
A dense unnatural mist began rolling between the ruined houses, swallowing broken walls and dead gardens until the square seemed to contract around them. Footsteps came through the fog at a measured rhythm.
A figure emerged. He wore a long midnight-blue cloak that moved heavily behind him through the smoke and his face was entirely concealed behind an indigo mask whose expression had been fixed into calm immobility.
Ravel could see no skin beneath the hood. The stranger walked without hurry into a square filled with armed devils, while the soldiers who had been shouting moments earlier slowly shifted their attention toward him.
"'Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?'" the masked stranger said. "So pondered Rilke in his elegies. Yet behold, you butchers of the despot, heaven remains mute while the earth thirsts for justice! A ghastly epilogue to an already tormented people, penned entirely in the blood of the innocent. Since the angels have declined their cue, I suppose someone else must step upon the stage."
The officer who had attacked Asia took a step backward and raised his axe again, though Ravel could see the uncertainty entering his posture.
"Who goes there?" he demanded. "Show your face, coward!"
The stranger spread his arms, and the blue cloak opened behind him like a pair of dark wings.
"A name is but a hollow vessel, a fleeting breath upon the wind," he answered. "Call me a nemesis to tyrants, a wandering ghost of classical lore! We are such stuff as dreams are made on. But I? I am your Lord's living nightmare. A masked paradox come to punctuate the grammar of your tyranny with a final, bloody period!"
Ravel saw recognition move through the soldiers and men who had been preparing to slaughter an entire village seconds earlier suddenly looked frightened. Several stepped backward, and one tightened both hands around his sword while staring at the indigo mask as though something terrible from an old story had walked into the square. Then someone gave that fear a name.
"Z-zero," one of them whispered.
The name passed through the formation with visible effect. The officer's face lost color beneath the blood smeared across it.
"Zero," he repeated, louder this time. "The rebel lunatic himself has finally crawled out from his hole. Kill him now, before he can use another one of his tricks."
The devil and two members of his vanguard rushed forward together. Zero remained motionless until they were almost within striking distance, then fire erupted around him in a perfect ring and a sword fashioned entirely from flame appeared in his hand. The first soldier swung. Zero slipped beneath the blow with a smooth turn of his body while two hidden blades flashed from his sleeves.
"'For art is the daughter of freedom!'"
The blades crossed the tendons behind the attacker's knees with blinding speed, and the soldier collapsed screaming onto the stones. Zero continued through the movement without pausing, pivoting toward the second devil as his cloak swept behind him.
"And freedom, my dull-witted sycophants, brooks no shackles!"
He caught the second soldier's weapon against his own blade, redirected it past his shoulder, and drove a kick into the devil's knee hard enough that Ravel heard the bone break. The man folded with a scream, and Zero seized him during the fall and flung him through the burning frame of a collapsed house. The remaining devil came at him with his massive axe sweeping horizontally through the smoke.
"I'll cleave you in bloody half!"
Zero sprang backward beyond the edge of the weapon and landed lightly upon his feet. He lunged before the devil could recover his balance. Ravel saw a blur of midnight cloth passing beneath the wooden haft, then Zero was suddenly inside the man's reach with a stiletto pressed directly against his throat.
The blade did not tremble. Zero leaned close enough that the devil alone should have heard him, though the silence of the square carried his words farther.
"This Rizevim must know: The gods may be blind, but Zero sees all. Memento mori."
For several seconds nobody moved. Burning wood cracked somewhere behind the houses. Zero slowly turned away from the soldiers as though their presence no longer required his attention. He faced Ravel and Asia, placed one hand over his heart, and bowed deeply.
"The stage is cleared, the tragedy averted for the evening. Rest your weary hearts, fair maidens. Destiny has granted you a belated asylum tonight."
Asia stared at him from behind Ravel's shoulder. "W-who are you?"
Zero turned slightly, and the smooth profile of his mask caught the reddish light of the burning village.
"Who I was, my benevolent sister, has withered away in the ash-fields of memory. The mask you behold is all that remains. And you may call me Zero!"
She had heard the name before, though it had been a long time since she had last been in the Underworld, and her brother had mentioned someone called Zero. He had saved them, something she could hardly ignore, but he had also arrived at precisely the moment they needed him, in a village supposedly attacked without warning by Rizevim's vanguard, and that coincidence was difficult to dismiss.
She stepped forward, her eyes narrowing while she kept herself between Zero and Asia.
"Hold it right there, Zero," Ravel said. "You expect us to just trust you? You drop out of the sky exactly when we're cornered, wearing a mask straight out of a cheap drama. Who are you? And how did you know we were here?"
"Ah! An inquisitor emerges from the ashes!" Zero seemed almost delighted by the challenge. "You demand a map of my past, a ledger of my footsteps! But tell me, skeptical maiden, when you gaze upon a grand fresco, do you demand to know the price of the painter's pigment?"
"Don't talk to me in riddles! What's your angle? What do you want with Asia?"
Asia moved beside her before Ravel could prevent it, her expression carrying that familiar earnest concern that appeared whenever she believed someone was being treated unfairly.
"Ravel, please, be kind!" Asia said. "He just saved our lives. He protected these innocent people. Whoever he is, his heart directed him to do good. Sir Zero… I am Asia Aregento. We are deeply in your debt."
Zero turned toward Asia and dropped onto one knee with the elaborate grace of a courtier, placing one gloved hand over his heart. "The debt is entirely mine, gentle sister," he said. "To witness such unyielding grace amidst a tempest of cruelty is a sonnet to the senses. Beauty is truth, truth beauty. Your kindness in this wretched realm is a canvas of pure gold."
Ravel stepped between them and crossed her arms, increasingly certain that allowing Asia to decide whether a mysterious masked revolutionary was trustworthy would shorten both their lives considerably.
"You're dodging the question," she accused. "You didn't just stumble upon this village by accident. The prince's vanguard moved in secret. Either you're tracking us, or you're tracking them. Which is it? And why the mask? If you're the great savior of the rebellion, why hide your face from the people you're supposedly rescuing?"
"Why the mask, you ask?" Zero rose slowly, every movement smooth and controlled. "Because a face is a prison! It binds a man to his birth, to his flaws, to the tragic mortality of his flesh. Look upon the statues of ancient Greece - the cold, pristine marble of Praxiteles! Did those masters carve the likeness of ordinary men? No! They sculpted ideals!"
He leapt onto a shattered stone pedestal, his midnight-blue cloak billowing behind him as he pointed one gloved finger toward the smoke-darkened heavens.
"This mask is my marble! It frees me from the mundane gravity of an identity. Underneath this porcelain smile, I am not a mere devil, nor a soldier, nor a flawed creature of flesh and bone. I am a living canvas! I am the manifestation of defiance! 'I am the spirit that constantly denies!' though my denial is aimed at the tyrant's throne!"
Ravel decided that this Zero persona was an insufferable dickhead; he had not even bothered answering her first question about who he was.
"You're insane." Ravel stared up at him while the village literally burned around them. "Asia, tell me you see how crazy this guy is. He's standing on a rock quoting dead poets while the village is burning down! I know who you claim to be. The Great Zero. The legendary savior of the underworld. But reputation means nothing to me when you show up out of nowhere like a ghost. State your purpose, Commander. Who are you really beneath that plastic face, and why are you here?"
Zero tapped the chin of his mask with one gloved finger and tilted his head with agonizingly slow, playful amusement.
"Who am I? Why am I here?" he repeated playfully. "Oh, my fierce little guardian, we are old acquaintances, you and I, bound by the grandest tapestry of all."
"Don't play games with me." Ravel narrowed her eyes. "I've never seen you before in my life."
"But you know me!" Zero spread his arms wide, and his voice rose into a booming, operatic cadence that carried through the ruined square. "For I am the whisper in the ear of the oppressed! I am the sudden, violent itch in the palm of the slave! You ask why I am here? I am here because Revolution is the divine inheritance of all sentient beings! From the highest heavens to the deepest pits of this sulfurous realm!"
He stepped down and began walking slowly around them, his cloak trailing through ash while Ravel moved with him to keep her body between Zero and Asia.
"Whether we speak of the children of Adam, breaking their backs under the weight of mortal empires, or the devils of this wretched kingdom, hunted like vermin by their own sovereign… the law remains absolute! Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains! I am simply the locksmith, my dear. A chaotic catalyst come to break the irons."
Ravel followed his movement without lowering her guard. "A locksmith who talks too much. You haven't answered the question, Zero. Why this village? Why us?"
Zero stopped dead in his tracks.
"The answer is standing right before me." His gloved finger pointed directly toward Asia before shifting toward Ravel. "A pious nun of the Holy Church, bearing the miracle of twilight healing, wandering the abyss… accompanied by a fierce protector from the high and mighty House of Phenex, no less! Tell me, noble daughter of the immortal fire, what brings a lady of your pedigree to the mud and blood of a peasant massacre?"
A chill passed through Ravel that had nothing to do with the evening air. He knew Asia possessed Twilight Healing. He knew Ravel belonged to House Phenex. The mask gave her nothing to read while he stood there demonstrating knowledge neither of them had offered him, and whatever gratitude she owed him had no power to silence the instincts drilled into her since childhood.
"That's absolutely none of your business! Why should we tell you a damn thing? You might lead the rebellion, but that doesn't mean we answer to you. We didn't ask for your commentary, and we certainly don't owe you our life stories."
"Splendid!" Zero clapped his hands together in a burst of theatrical delight, his laughter carrying rich and loud across the square. "The fiery temper of the Phenex, burning bright even when the house is in ruins! But oh, how the silence tantalizes me! A secret kept is a play unperformed. Why shouldn't you tell me? Is the great House of Phenex suddenly shy? Or perhaps the little nun's prayers are too sacred for a humble devil's ears? Come, whisper the truth into the dark. Give the actor his cue!"
Asia looked around Ravel's shoulder.
"Ravel, please," she said softly. "… Sir Zero, we are only trying to help. We want to protect these innocent people from the King's cruelty. We have no secret motives, I promise you."
"A pure answer from a pure soul!" Zero said. "Blessed are the peacemakers, your gospel says, does it not? Fear not, little nun, and fret not, angry bird of fire. I mean you no harm."
Ravel remained where she stood between them, watching the mask and trying to decide what kind of person could speak like this while standing amid the ruins of a village that had almost been exterminated. Around them the surviving townspeople had begun moving toward the chained prisoners, cutting bonds, embracing relatives, and calling names through the smoke.
Zero seemed entirely untroubled by Ravel's suspicion, which somehow made him more irritating. Every question she asked appeared to give him another opportunity to perform for an audience he alone seemed able to see.
He had barely finished assuring Asia that he meant them no harm when light shifted between two ruined houses at the edge of the square and another figure stepped through the smoke, her crimson hair flowing behind her in the hot current rising from the burning roofs.
Ravel recognized her at once and sighed in relief. Rias Gremory looked exhausted and yet there was still enough grace in the way she carried herself that the surrounding villagers instinctively gave her room.
She took in Zero standing amid the rubble, the wounded soldiers, Asia half-hidden behind Ravel, and the destruction around them before fixing the masked man with an expression of profound exasperation.
"Oh, stop with your ridiculous theatrics already, Zero! You're scaring the poor children with all this shouting and jumping on rocks!"
Zero turned toward her with one hand pressed dramatically to his chest, as though she had wounded him somewhere far deeper than flesh. "Alas! The grand director arrives to stifle the muse! You pierce the veil of my art with thy austere demeanor, Lady Gremory."
Asia made a small sound beside Ravel, and when Ravel glanced toward her she saw that the girl's eyes had gone wide with shock. "… Rias?!"
Ravel herself lowered her guard without quite realizing she was doing it, staring through the smoke at the woman who had once been her brother's fiance. "Rias Gremory? Is that you?"
Rias looked toward them properly for the first time, and her own surprise appeared just as immediate. "Asia?! Ravel?! What in Satan's name are you two doing here?!"
Asia did not wait for anything further. She ran across the short distance between them and threw both arms around Rias with enough force to make the older girl stagger half a step. Ravel watched Rias's expression soften almost instantly. Whatever strain the war had placed upon her seemed to recede for a moment as she wrapped both arms around Asia and held her close.
"Oh, Rias! I can't believe it's really you! I am so happy you're ok, but seeing you here… it's a miracle!"
Rias ran one hand slowly through Asia's hair while holding her with the other. "Shh, it's alright, Asia. I'm happy to see you too, though I would've preferred under better circumstances."
Ravel stepped closer only after the embrace had ended, still finding the sight strangely difficult to comprehend; the air around Rias felt different, more assured and dangerous, as though reality itself were bending to accommodate the presence of the Princess of Ruin.
"It's an honor to see you again, Lady Gremory."
"I'm glad to see you too, Ravel!" Rias said with a soft smile. "Riser will be happy to see you safe. But please, someone explain this madness to me. Asia, why on earth are you in the underworld right now? This place is a slaughterhouse."
Ravel exhaled slowly and crossed her arms, because explaining Asia's decision had not become any easier simply because she was now doing it to someone else.
"It was Asia's idea," she threw the Nun under the bus. "She insisted on coming to the underworld. She…she wanted to help here, to heal anyone caught in the crossfire of this nightmare. I couldn't let her come alone."
Rias stared at Asia for several seconds, her expression passing through disbelief into something close to incredulity. "Are you telling me… you willingly came straight into the middle of a war-torn wasteland? To use your Twilight Healing to heal devils? Have you forgotten you're a nun and we're devils?"
From somewhere behind them came a soft chuckle, and Zero stepped forward from the shadows with one slow sweep of his arm as though the conversation had presented him with another opportunity to perform.
"Ah! The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. How poetic that a daughter of the cross sees the divine image even in the horns of a demon!"
Asia stepped back from Rias's embrace and stood straighter. Ravel saw the same expression she had seen before they entered the Underworld, that quiet certainty which appeared whenever Asia spoke about something she had already settled within herself and no longer needed anyone else to approve.
"Yes, Rias. I came here for them. I was given this gift of healing by my Lord, the shepherd of souls. It's not my place to judge who is worthy of life and who is not. All I know is that He gave me the power to heal people, regardless of whether they are devils, humans, or fallen angels!
"The mighty beings of this world, the great Demon Lords and the proud Princes, are playing their wicked games of power and thrones. And as it always has been throughout history, it is the innocent, the weaker people, who must suffer the horrific consequences of their vanity. I know I am just one person. I know I can't stop the ruthless Prince of Hell. But I am here to do my part. If I can mitigate even a fraction of the suffering, if I can dry the tears of just one child, then my life has purpose."
For once even Zero did not interrupt. The square remained quiet except for the low crackle of burning wood and the occasional sound of one injured villager helping another to move. Ravel watched Rias closely and saw the effect Asia's words had upon her.
Ravel herself had heard much of the same reasoning before coming here and still found it difficult to understand how Asia could speak of it with such certainty while standing in a place that had nearly killed her minutes earlier.
"You haven't changed at all, Asia. You're still far too kind for this world." Rias's expression hardened as she looked around the square, and the warmth faded beneath something solemn. "But the reality here is worse than you can possibly imagine."
Asia followed her gaze toward the dead and wounded executioners, then toward the chained reincarnated devils who were only beginning to understand that they had survived.
"Rias… please tell me what's happening," Asia trembled. "Why are the prince's forces doing this? Why are the devils killing the reincarnated and newborn devils on sight? They're their own kind!"
"Madness, that's what this is. Rizevim has proposed a final solution - a horrific plan to completely 'purify' the Underworld. All reincarnated devils, the half-devils, and any newborn who doesn't meet his twisted standard of purity as false devils. His soldiers have been ordered to hunt them down like animals… and to collect their scalps as trophies to prove their obedience."
Ravel and Asia stared at Rias with the same horror, and the question came out between them almost at once. "W-what? Why? Why would he want that? It would mean hundreds of thousands of devils would be killed for the sole crime of being reincarnated or half-devils?!"
"Don't look for purpose in the actions of the wicked. Their minds are a labyrinth where reason goes to die." Zero's voice came from behind them, and this time there was far less amusement in it. "This is the ultimate, putrid culmination of the corrupt! They enforce the tyranny of evil because they know their archaic world is crumbling. They butcher the innocent because a tyrant knows no other vocabulary than blood!
"But let them harvest their trophies. Let them stoke the fires of their arrogance. For every drop of innocent blood spilled on this soil is a seed of fire! We, the shattered, the rejected, the false devils, shall rise as a harvest of vengeance. We will tear down their pristine ivory towers and bury their false purity in the very ash they created!"
Ravel looked at him after he finished, and for the first time since his appearance she understood why frightened soldiers had gone pale when they recognized the mask. The villagers were looking at him differently now as well.
She turned her attention back toward Rias. The older girl was watching the villagers, and Ravel wondered how many places like this she had already seen since the war began, how many survivors her resistance had managed to pull out before Rizevim's forces arrived and how many she did not. She also understood, with a sinking certainty, that Asia would take everything she had just heard as another reason to stay.
--
--
Later, after the revolutionary forces had secured what remained of the village, several teleportation circles were prepared in the square to move the survivors somewhere beyond the immediate reach of Rizevim's soldiers.
Everyone understood that the village had become untenable the moment the Prince of Hell learned his execution party had failed, and so Rias had gathered the inhabitants beneath the ruined bell tower and told them that remaining here would invite another massacre and that the rebellion could at least offer them a place where they might live another day.
Zero stood near the circles directing the evacuation, his theatrical manner subdued for once by the practical work of moving hundreds of frightened people without allowing the process to collapse into confusion. Rias left him to it and crossed the square toward Ravel and Asia, waiting until they were far enough from the others that their conversation would remain private.
"So what exactly is your plan?" Rias asked Asia, folding her arms as she studied her. "Are you planning to go from village to village and challenge Rizevim's lackeys, because I assure you, you won't last long enough to make any real change."
Asia lowered her eyes and blushed faintly, looking suddenly much younger than she had while standing before armed soldiers. "To be honest, I don't know," she admitted. "I only wish to help and heal those who need healing, but it feels like I arrived in a maze of broken souls and I don't know where to begin."
Rias looked between the two of them for several seconds, considering something in silence before her expression softened. "I can offer you a place with us in the rebels' hideouts. I can't guarantee you'll be safe there,but I promise to do my best to protect you and Issei will be happy to see you again. And your healing ability would be invaluable to our cause. But I understand if you don't–"
"We'll join you!" Asia answered without hesitation. "You said Ravel's brother is also there, right? It'll be good for Ravel to meet her brother again."
Rias regarded Ravel with an inquisitive look. "Not just her brother," she added. "House Phenex has also joined the rebels after the announcement of Aeterna Puritas. They are one of the few houses to openly deny the prince's mandate."
Ravel was hardly surprised, her brother had all but implied as much the last time they spoke. However, the openness of the defiance surprised her far more.
"They defied Rizevim openly?" she asked. "I can't imagine our bannermen would simply accept House Phenex's decision."
"Nor did they," Rias said with a tired sigh. "More than half of House Phenex's bannermen have rebelled, and there is something of a civil war inside your family's territory now. We're trying to help where we can. Your house has been indispensable to the rebel cause, especially with its supply of Phenex Tears."
Pride warmed Ravel's heart, and she lifted her chin slightly. She had expected no less from her household, even if the cost of that decision was clearly greater than she had imagined. The thought of Phenex lands divided against themselves unsettled her, though she pushed that aside for the moment. There would be time to ask about Ruval, Riser, and the rest once they reached the rebel hideout.
"Still…to find you here of all places…" Rias continued, looking between the two of them with an expression Ravel could not quite read. "The Underworld is enormous. What are the chances that you would end up at the exact village we happened to come to rescue?"
Ravel understood what she meant. Had they arrived anywhere else in the Underworld where Rizevim's forces were active, their deaths would have been all but certain, but everything about this situation reeked of either a carefully arranged trap or some bizarre twist of fate, because arranging such a coincidence would require someone capable of manipulating probability, perhaps even fate itself, with enough subtlety to orchestrate their meeting without leaving any trace, though if anything, it only confirmed Ravel's earlier suspicions.
"Lady Asia is protected by a power greater than the Prince of Hell," Ravel said at last, keeping the statement deliberately vague.
How else could any of this be explained? Asia and Ravel should both have died when Asia recklessly threw herself between the devils and their executioners, and the sheer improbability of Zero and an entire revolutionary army arriving at precisely that moment was simply too miraculous to dismiss as coincidence.
"I see… so another of His machinations, huh?" Rias's hand closed into a fist at her side as irritation crossed her face. "By what right does he play dice with people's fates?"
Asia looked between them, confusion overtaking her features. "What do you mean, Rias-chan? Whose machination?"
"No one important," Rias said with a soft smile, though the tension remained around her eyes. Then she looked back toward Asia. "But what you told me earlier, is that truly all the reason you're here? Risking the wrath of Rizevim just to heal devils?"
Asia hesitated, her hands drawing together before her as her expression turned awkward. "Well, not entirely," she admitted. "I am… I'm also here to apologize to you, Rias-chan, for what he put you through. I know it may not mean much, but I am truly sorry."
Rias's face changed at once. Whatever softness had remained there disappeared, and the firmness in her expression made Asia fall silent before she could continue.
"Stop," Rias said. "Don't apologize for him, Asia. Whatever He owes me cannot be paid with your remorse. Too much has happened, too many people have been hurt, and too many choices were made deliberately for me to accept borrowed remorse in his place. If he has something to apologize for, then one day he can stand in front of me and say it himself. I won't let you place his guilt on your shoulders because you care about him."
Rias sighed, calming herself. "Come, follow me. The evacuation is nearly finished, and I'll show you to our hideouts. There are still many people who need healing."
AN: Hey Zero, How many Shakespeare references do you want?
Zero: Yes.
Incidentally, I once read a quote that went something like, "Give a man a mask, and he'll show you his true self." It seems, Haruki's true self is that of a cringe theater kid who constantly quotes classical literature. One must imagine him shutting up.
At least he hasn't started going on long rants about the linguistic development of the English language.
Advanced chapters are available on my Patreon. If you want to read ahead, vote on which story gets updated each week, or simply support my writing so I can focus more on it, you can check it out here: abeltargaryen?