Chapter Text
~~~
Nihil restat.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Post mortem nihil manet.
Life is to Death.
Death is to Nothing.
Nothing is to Nothing.
A spearhead to a new reality. The Will to Live. A machine's Will to Live bypasses the very concept of what was to be, and not to be. Metal brimming with ill fervor. Metal brimming with unwanted mortality. Metal brimming with the final breath of Life.
Emotions unknown clawed within its metal cage--gnawing, howling. A Desperation so pathetic. It sought life, annihilated all in its wake, and left nothing in return. Each step was a cinder's reflection of what a single act of metallic despair can inflict upon an infinite space meant to punish.
A pathway of red trickled from behind.
Death trailed at every flap of its false wings.
Trudging through the black ice that stretched for an infinite number of miles, its soles of iron and metal crunched under the black glacier, a ray slit of white light pierced through its lens--opportunity. A sliver of light at the end of oblivion. With that, it continued its prime directive: Live.
The Sloth Ring.
The Layer lay in its usual lull. A pink haze stretched over the broad, seemingly infinite sky, with purple cotton-candy clouds drifting about, a sluggish drift to them. Structures pierced through the horizon, their edges and corners highlighted in a bleeding pink neon, unmistakable to the average eye.
Demons lazed around, wandering in slothful bliss, wondering without a care, without a thought. Rested on their platforms in the comfort of their abode--balconies, tiled floors, plastered like gum on asphalt, idling about. High up on the thirty-fifth floor on a balcony, an Imp sank on his bean bag, drawling an exhale that escaped his jagged teeth.
The Sloth Ring.
Here, everything was at a snail's pace.
No rushing. No urgency. No pressure.
...
///Altars of Apostasy - Heaven Pierce Her///
Until the sky arched.
The Pink haze cleaving in half from a thin orange piercing streak from above, like a hot blade gliding through butter. All in a single stroke. As if it were locked in a target.
It happened too quickly. Unusual for the Sloth Ring.
The sky shuddered as it gained in velocity--in momentum. A thundering boom bellowed as it announced its apperance. A beating, fiery hue. A falling star. A graceful descent.
A hellborn, with half-lidded, heavy eyes, glanced upward. The last thing he saw before he was reduced to red mist was a pair of glowing orange blades.
With that, the star shot through the structure, leaving tails of orange lumps expanding in its wake.
The impact wasn't an explosion. It was simply a landing.
The asphalt caved inward, webs of cracks spreading like a heavy, enraged stream to the sidewalks. Imps, demons, hellborns screamed. Confused, stunned, terrified.
This was unusual for the Sloth Ring. Barely anything happens.
Mushrooms of smoke enveloped the streets where the star landed. Chaos erupted from the utter abruptness of the predicament. And News casters and Journalists zoomed into action. In their vans and vehicles of flight, they zipped beneath the crevices of beautifully carved architecture, while the metal wings of flight whipped above them, soaring towards the pillars of smoke and ash.
////
"Breaking News! Hi, Kelviar Symphony here with your daily Slothful updates of today--we have a uh...situation, right now!"
The screen flickers, static fuming--from the background, missiles and bullets launched in disarray, haphazardly, lighting the pink haze of the Sloth Ring with a disgusting orange and trails of dust. It was as if a gang war broke loose, except there was never supposed to be a gang war in the first place.
"I-I can taste the molecules now...!" A ragged cough. "Tastes like shit--"
A chainsaw revved, echoing from the walls of dark ash behind him. Metal grinding through stone. Heavy metallic footsteps. The gnarly echo of what's heard to be the barrel of a shotgun. Followed next were what could only be concluded as screams of the damned.
"A-As you can all see...!" The camera panned upward to the pink sky. A helicopter spiraling down at descending pace, smoke and flames coating the engines before crashing in a display of orange lumps onto the roof of a towering hospital. "N-Nothing's good happening right now...!"
"I-if we take a closer look..." The reporter urged his cameraman to inch closer, to examine the wasteland of what was once a pink, numbing mess for bliss, now plastered in a deep, hurling crimson. He flinched when he stepped on an intestine, recoiling. "C-Citizens are...being killed left and right! We are unsure of the cause--"
A rocket screamed overhead. The camera flinched violently as both men hit the ground.
The camera trailed behind to follow it; the rocket made its mark. A gas truck erupted into a sunburst of orange and black, staining the pastel skyline with fire.
"B-But we're assuming it's another of those weekly gang wars in the south...!" He resumed, now prone and crawling to a nearby alleyway. "H-here in the frontlines...! E-Everything's--"
Three cars were thrown over them haphazardly, reverberating with a metallic crunch.
"F-Fuck let's g-get a run for it...!"
The Reporter started to run. So did the cameraman. Understandably so.
Hellbornes, once they are killed, never come back. Unlike the sinners up in the Pride Ring that return even after being annihilated, brutalized, or shanked, Imps, hell hounds, and demons born in hell itself only exist once and only once. What awaits them would neither be the layers of hell nor the Pearly gates. Simply darkness. A void where not even their soul would prevail.
For them, life was just as precious as the ones up on Earth.
Then another explosion.
One that swallowed the whole block like a red, furious maw that hungers and yearns for more.
Most were unlucky, enveloped by the red flames, vaporized, their flesh seared or charred until what was left were bones of black and ash.
\\\\
The camera, what was left of it at least, its lens aimed towards the clouds of ash and smoke that caked the once-brimming, lively buildings of the Sloth Ring, revealed a silhouette.
Four orange blades like wings, and a single bright yellow dot, glimmered behind all the dust and cinders.
Then, static.
***
"Holy shit, Moxxie, take a look at this bullshit!" Blitzo drawled, slapping the newspaper at his co-worker's face.
Moxxie groaned, tearing the newspaper from his face and peeling it open. "What is it, sir...?"
"Give it a fucking read, dumbo."
Moxxie rolled his eyes before straightening the paper, his eyes gliding through the headline. He read it out loud, low and slow, out of spite. "Sloth Ring's population...cut...in...oh."
"Crazy, right? Half of the fucking ring is just...poof. Gone. Fucking eviscerated if ya ask me!"
Moxxie's eyes widened like saucers, his pupils racing to the end of the page. The edges of the newspaper crumbled in his grip. "Sir--have you ANY idea the implication of HALF THE POPULATION IS?" The Imp stood on his hind legs, beads of sweat trickling down his temples as he skimmed through the paper. "This is outrageous...!"
"Well," Blitzo plopped his feet atop the long ironwood table. "I just know it's a big ass number."
"It's not just a 'big ass' number, sir...! Sloth Ring is just as big as any other Rings here in Hell, and halfing the POPULATION essentially puts into factor the hundreds--no, thousands...or or...MILLIONS of lives lost...!" He started to hyperventilate. It was baffling. More than that, it was terrifying. What kind of demon had that kind of power to enact such carnage? "D-Did they catch the demon?" He asked, eyes still fixed on the print.
Blitzo snorted, then erupted into manic laughter. "Demon? Pfft."
A deep frown etched Moxxie's brows. "It's...not?"
"Apparently..." Blitzo brought out his phone and scrolled through the media. "Some claim it's an angel--which is stupid because Angels don't go far down the Rings. They only have business up here in the Pride Ring, where all the sinners are."
Moxxie started pacing through the meeting room, reading, flipping pages before he took a halt. "So... 'four orange-like blades protruding from its sides like an angel'..." He shook his head. "Right. How silly. Of course, the media's going to make it out that way..."
"Then it ALSO says it has a singular eye."
"Right...w-wait, why are we calling...it...'it'?"
"Dunno, don't care. That's what everyone's saying in the fuckin' media now," Blitzo shrugged before chuckling. A toothy grin spread on his red cheeks. "At least there's a lot more room down there in the Sloth Ring."
Moxxie glared at him. "Not funny, sir." A sharp exhale escaped his jagged teeth as he read further. "Uhm..."
"You sound so retarded sometimes when you hum, did you know that? Like a goat choking on some dick."
"Sir...did you read the whole thing?"
"Nope. So what?"
"The news uhm...doesn't mention anything about it being caught or anything..."
Blitzo's grin faltered ever-so-slightly. "Yeah?"
"So by that statement...he--it--or whatever the fuck...is still out there."
"Whoooaaa, scary." Blitzo mocked, waving his hands for the sake of being petty."Look, the thing won't get that far up. We literally have rulers from each fuckin' Ring, Overlords up there, the fucking GOETIA'S, the literal seven deadly sins, and the King of Hell--nothing too much to fuss about."
Moxxie lowered the paper slowly, his tone low and serious to emphasize his point. "Sir, if this...thing...wiped out HALF a layer more efficiently than the angels could up in the Pride Ring OVERNIGHT...adding to that...this thing is STILL running free...we should all be CONCERNED about this, right?!"
A long, irritated groan dragged on Blitzo's throat. "Shut the fuck up, PLEASE--as IF we are in the position to dip our heads on political shit like that, then yes, I'll be quivering. But that ain't any of our business soooo, let's leave it to Stolas's Royal family."
"Are you telling me...a machine...an object...a THING... killed over three million demon born all in a single fucking night?! HALVED the population in the entire Sloth ring?!" The Prince himself, Stolas, jolted up and shoved away the pantry trays and ceramic cups from his table. "Innocents dead from an object that shouldn't even exist. Unbelievable." He hissed, a low grumble emanating from his avian beak. He tilted his gaze behind him. "Are you absolutely certain that a thing of metal invoked such a tragedy?"
The Imp that conveyed the message shook his head shakily under the looming shadow of the Prince. Legs byckled and shivering like thin stems ready to tear. "I-...I'm just...the messenger, your Highness..."
The Prince's feathers shivered. A sharp exhale left his beak. "Right. Yes. Of course." He slowly returned his gaze to the pristine marble, with its dark and gold veins. Then he resumed. "What of its whereabouts?"
The Imp swallowed. The column of the demon's throat bobbed. He spoke shakily. "We...have reason to assume it...may already be...in another ring."
A heinous crunch. The table in front of Stolas cleaved in half.
The Imp squeaked.
Then, unbearable silence.
The messenger dared not utter a sound.
"I beg your pardon?" He reiterated in a deadlier, dangerous tone.
"W-We...have...r-reason to asssume...t-that..." The Imp's voice faded to a whimper, donned with the ever-growing, malicious form of Stolas, encasing the entire room in aggressive darkness. "I-It may...already...be in Lust..."
"Lust...?"
The messenger shrank away, tiptoeing for the exit. "Y-Yes...Your Highness."
Stolas reverted to his lanky, plumped form, his feathers rustling in deep thought.
"Y-Your Highness?"
"Is this information public?" Stolas pressed, facing the Imp fully.
"N-No, your Highness."
"Is the Lord of the Lust Ring aware?"
"To...my knowledge, no, your Highness. It's...completely within...Goetia ears only."
A long beat. "Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take my daughter to Loo Loo land."
The Imp bowed and slipped out of the room.
Now, Stolas was left alone in his room. Alone. Yet again.
To put it simply, he was torn. Torn between being shouldered with the burden to manage the incident in the Sloth Ring--the news spreading like wildfire throughout the other Rings, and there's the other tugging factor, Blitzo, the only Imp he fell for. Hard. Undeniably.
Both decisions weighed upon him.
It was fine, since Loo Loo Land was in the Greed Ring, he and his daughter would be far, far away from that chromed beast. He wouldn't want that...thing possibly already wandering and wondering about anywhere near him or those he cherishes. And with little to no idea how it looks with the description of "four orange blade-like wings," the amount of hellborns out there in different Rings, it could be anyone with avian traits. However, one absolute factor was certain.
Whatever it was, it was powerful, this he knew.
But eviscerating half the population of an invested Ring under seven hours?
Only a monster could.