บท 9: The argonaut

He ignored the dark angry sky, the tower of plants hovering over him like cruel judgemental gods.

He ignored the aching pain he felt, he ignored the way his body burnt from the inside and he focused only on what was in his arms.

He focused only on his son, on the corpse of his son. His son had inherited the white colour of his eyes and his hair from his father but everything else came from his mother, Jason's dead wife.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. None of this was supposed to be happening. His baby boy should have been laughing, complaining about school and how it bored him. He wasn't supposed to be so unnaturally still.

He had chosen this city of the United States because the population and even the religious members of their church hadn't been aware of the supernatural, at least, that's what he thought.

He had wanted to raise his child in a place where he wouldn't have to fear for his life OR suffer either because of devils like Jason had done due to his status as a half-blood or Exorcists, fanatics believing in the extinction of everything they saw as blasphemous against their god. Nicholas, his son had been his everything.

"Why?" he felt himself ask. The voice that came from him was the voice of a broken man who had lost everything.

"Why?" an approaching voice repeated his question. "You're really asking me that?". The owner of the voice finally appeared in Jason's vision field. He wore priest robs over what seemed to be an expensive tailor-made suit

Jason said nothing waiting for an answer, one that could explain why, why was the life of his only child taken away when he hadn't done anything.

"Woah, you're serious," the man said with surprise in his voice. The priest, no with the way the man oozed confidence, it was clear that he was more. That wasn't a mere priest aware of the supernatural. It was an exorcist. He stopped walking before Jason.

"That's simple really. You're devils, creatures of darkness and I did half of my duty, cleanse the darkness that your son represented," the exorcist spoke.

That was it? The reason why his son died was only because of his nature? He watched how the exorcist lit up a cigarette. "Do you want one?" the exorcist asked.

He presented the package of fags to Jason. He didn't move. After a moment, the exorcist understood and put it in one of his pockets. "He was just a quarter devil," Jason found himself saying.

"I thought that it was more but hey, it is what it is. He's still had the blood of a demon running in his veins. I'm sure that the lord will accept him in his kingdom because of his humanity after thousands of years of repentance." The exorcist made a cross with his arms.

The exorcist looked at his watch "It's getting late. Sister Rosa will pester me all day tomorrow if don't come back soon. I'll soon deal with you. Do you want to ask a last question before I send you to our lord?"

Pride, the exorcist exuded it as if he already won, as if killing Jason's son was just a formality. "I just want to know something. Why now? All that time, you and the other members of the church knew of our presence for all those thirteen years yet it is today without any provocation that you attack and kill my son. Why?"

"Honestly, I wanted to exterminate you and your family for a long time way before your wife even died. Copulating with Half Demons? It's a no-no in the eyes of the lord. It's one of the greatest sins, an unforgivable one but each time I unfortunately wanted to get rid of you, there was always a you can't do this, they're peaceful, the war ended, they're also part humans and all the crap."

The exorcist threw his non-finished cigarette on the ground and smothered it under his feet. "I knew it was just a question of time because things went wrong. It's in the make-up of your kind. You only bring suffering and devastation into this world. I was proven right when your kind decided to kill the pope, kill cardinals, attack the Vatican, attack god himself. Now the other recognized that I was right. I was finally given the authorization to slay you and your spawn Jason Amduscias."

"I'll pray for your soul that in the next world, you may be allowed to come back to this world as a being pure untainted from sin." Jason watched how the plants began to rush at him.

Time slowed as Jason watched them coming close. Jason wondered if he should try to fight, or do anything. What would be the point? He had lost everyone that mattered. His grandfather, the original Amduscias, the only parental figure that he had, who had loved him and didn't treat him as lesser because of his half-blood status had died fifteen years ago of injuries he had sustained in the great war.

His wife had died giving birth to their son and the son that had been his reason to continue had just died in his arms.

Was this how everything was going to end? Was he going to let the killer of his son able to leave after as if nothing had happened?

He has been wrong. There was one thing that still mattered. There was own thing that still animated him and that was to drench the fucking earth with the blood of the exorcist.

Around him, the gigantic trees stopped in their advance as if they were held away by an invisible force.

The exorcist had been leaving but stopped when he didn't hear the sound of broken bones and flesh, of his pillar entering into and cratering the Earth.

"Oh?" the exorcist said in surprise. "I thought that there was no fight in you anymore, that the death of your spawn had broken you. Well, it see-".

Jason didn't let him finish. He pushed with all of his might, darted through obstacles and punched the motherfucker in the face.

He felt something crack under his fist before the exorcist form was sent flying away to a neighbouring home.

Screams erupted from it as the inhabitants of it began to scream in terror. He felt a surge of Holy energy as if waiting to be activated at any moment.

The exorcist came walking out of the house. The punch of Jason had deformed his face. His jaw was hanging in a grotesque sight yet the exorcist didn't seem bothered or feeling pain.

Even in his state, the exorcist opened his mouth and spoke as if nothing had happened "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

He watched how reality bent with the words of power of the exorcist. He was back in pristine condition as if everything that had happened had just been an illusion, a lie that Jason's brain had believed.

"You're a saint," Jason said to the exorcist already knowing it to be true. Saints were human beings with enough holy power that they had been either lucky to be born with or faithful with such faith that the Abrahamic god himself granted them proportional to their faith authority over the world.

There once had been millions of them at the beck and call of the church and Heaven. Most templars had been saints. They had been the first of Heaven on Earth.

They had slayed in the name of the god they worshipped an innumerable number of Pagan deities and supernatural beings.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on who you ask, with The decline and the major loss of power of the church in the last centuries, Saints have become rarer and rarer.

"This is the title that the church gave us. I prefer to call myself an executioner. It's less prideful," the exorcist said.

The exorcist stopped meters away from him. "Are you scared now that you know what I am? Will you try to run or beg for your life?" the exorcist questioned.

Around them, the silent neighbourhood had become alive. The sleeping mundane had awakened and were now acting like headless chickens. "Shit, the head sister will have my hide. So many people to hypnotize. Well, it is what it is.

Vines and thorns began to sprout from the ground coiling as if they were snakes ready to strike "I'll deal with all of this after I kill you."

Jason searched and dug inside for a spark that he hadn't touched for a really long time. He embraced it into his heart, into his soul and ignited it. Lightning, dark violet plasma surges from inside him igniting and filling every one of his cells with energy.

Sparks of electricity appeared and disappeared around him. "I don't care if I die or live Saint," Jason said softly. "The only thing that mattered to me right now is fucking annihilating you."

The exorcist rolled up his sleeves leaving his arms bared. They were covered completely by blood-red tattoos, tattoos of Bible verses. 'They were probably similar in their functionement to runes' Jason mentally noted.

Jason took a fighting stance, hands at his chest height, face exposed, his feet were heel, toe shoulder width apart.

In the next second, the saint was rushing at him, a punch directed toward his face, exactly what he wanted.

Jason slid to the right, the arm of the exorcist overextended before him. Lightning crackled and coated his right arm and with it, Jason moved to cut the arm of his enemy.

He watched how slowly due to the speed his mind operated his attack came closer to his opponent. It should meant his victory yet Jason felt as if something was wrong.

He was proven right when the spot he was on the point of striking bulged as if worms were crawling into the skin of the Saint.

The flesh distorted and exploded in a shower of gore and blood. A spike came Rushing at him from the disfigured arm.

'He knew I would dodge,' Jason realized. He wanted and counted on me doing this and counter-attacking. That was a trap.

'That was clever,' he had to admit. Fortunately, he also had tricks. He continued not trying to escape or dodge the thorn.

The thorn entered in contact with Jason's skin and phased through him. It was said that The members of the Amduscias clan had control over lightning. That was wrong. They didn't control it, they were lightning.

How could Lightning, something so unearthly be touched by something not from the Heavens?

He watched with satisfaction how the smile on the face of the exorcist was turning into shock. This time, Jason wouldn't give him a chance to survive. He targeted the heart of his opponent, piercing his flesh with his right arm, attaining his heart, grabbing it and removing it in a violent display that demons of old would be proud of before kicking the Saint in the face sending him flying again.

The heart of the exorcist was still beating in his grasp as if not aware yet that it had been removed from his owner. Jason crushed it making the organ spatter him with blood.

"Nicholas, it's done," he whispered. "Soon, I'll be with you."

Jason pumped all of his demonic energy into his bloodline making it more potent, more wild, more dangerous.

He could see light radiate from his skin, cracks that began to form. At that moment, he wondered if would his grandfather be proud.

"I tried my best," he said to himself. His gaze locked on the sun, the star of their solar system. It was so beautiful, so bright just like them.

A common activity that he had used to do with his son had been to watch the stars. With their nature as supernatural beings, they had been able to see more than mankind could ever imagine. Nicholas had told him that he had wanted to become one, to become a star so bright, so beautiful, so intense that he could never be forgotten, ignored.

Jason closed his eyes. He wondered if, for an instant, he would be as bright as Nicholas wished he could have been.

His thoughts stilled with the sound of a voice, of a familiar one "Oy, it is not finished," the voice spoke.

Jason opened his eyes. His gaze fell on the walking living form of the saint. "How?" Jason could not stop himself from asking.

The gap that Jason had left when he had taken the heart of his enemy was still there. "What kind of monster you are?"

"A monster, you're inversing things devil spawn but I understand that it can be shocking. It's simple really."

The tone of his voice changes taking what could only be called gravitas. It was the second time. It was as if he was before a deity for an instant "Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security," the exorcist preached.

Jason watched how thorns appeared and slithered into the flesh of the exorcist and began to sewn him back together replacing what had been destroyed, taken. "That's simple really, I'm a weapon, his weapon and weapons don't die," the Saint spoke.

Jason flexed his arms checking on their state. They could still move. That was good. His bloodline was still running amok in him destroying him little by little.

He could stop it but it would mean that for a moment, he would be devoid of ways to defend himself until his demonic energy replenished.

If he didn't stop, he calculated that his bloodline would destroy him in the next 4 minutes. Four minutes to kill a Saint, a being capable of shaping and transfiguring the world according to his faith.

The smart thing would be to try to run but Jason had never been smart. Lightning-shaped devil wings exploded free from his back.

Jason rose in the sky, his gaze encompassing all the city where he had lived with his child.

Under him, he felt an explosion of holy energy and saw how the Earth itself began to move. "God had said," the Saint spoke.

"I command the earth to give life to all kinds of tame animals, wild animals, and reptiles And that's what happened. God made every one of them. Then he looked at what he had done, and it was good. God also said, Now we will make humans, and they will be like us," the Saint chanted words of power.

Jason raised his hand and grabbed the entirety of it. "Never forget what we are, what you are," his grandfather had told him.

Under him, Jason watched how Metal, Iron, glass and rocks from all the city and the Earth itself began to move breaking away from their original places to bend at the will of the Saint.

'4 minutes' Jason reminded himself. Dark angry clouds covered his forms changing their nature due to his will being imposing on them, twisting due to his innate sorcery clading his body in a dark armor and bestowing in his right arm a jagged spear.

The world, the Earth attacked him and Jason Amduscias answered instead of running by flying toward it.

*scene*

"What are you watching," Jason heard a voice behind him say.

"The stars Grandfather," he answered.

"Is it your wish? Would you like me to remove them to give them to you?" the Demon rasped at him.

His gaze fell on his grandfather. It was clear that his grandfather was unmistakably a monster. With the head of a unicorn full of jagged rusted teeth, a towering body longer than ten feet tall, with Hands and feet finishing in the shape of claws, it was clear that what was before him wasn't human at all yet he only felt comfort close to his grandfather.

"No," he answered. "What makes them beautiful is the illusion that they're non attainable."

"I worry Jason," the demon spoke. "It is just a question of time. I can feel it in my essence before I'm claimed by her. I worry about what you'll become after I leave. Your father, my spawn, the only good thing he brought to this world is you and he doesn't realize it. If it wasn't because you begged me, he wouldn't still be my heir."

"Grandfather, I am also scared," the boy admitted. "You are the only one that cared, that loved me. You were there congratulating me when I learned how to walk. You were there at each birthday. It was on your shoulders that I cried each time I felt sad. I love my father even though I know he doesn't. I am scared because I don't see other than you any other reason to live."

He watched how his grandfather kneeled. Even kneeling, Jason only arrived at the lower stomach of the Demon. The demon opened his arms and Jason engulfed himself in them.

"Jason, do you remember what we are?" the Demon whispered.

"We're the thunder, we're the light, we're the living proofs of the magnificence of this universe's anger," Jason repeated the words.

Those words had been engraved In his mind by his grandfather before he could even work. The demon had told him that it was primordial for him to never forget so he never did.

"It's in our nature Jason for us to illuminate and scarr the world. It's in our nature whether we want it or not to bathe the universe in Amethyst."

"I was scared because I knew that by leaving you alone, I would hurt you, that others like your father or his consort would try to treat you in a despicable way now that I'm not there. What I'm not scared of is of you shining. Look at those stars," his grandfather told him redirecting Jason's gaze toward them softy with a claw.

"I wish that I could see it, the day that you would shine and burn brighter than all of them. Look at the stars Jason," the demon softly repeated. "Look at them and never forget who you are Jason Amduscias."

"Grandfather?" Jason said while looking at the stars.

"Yes my child," the demon answered.

"I love you," he told the demon turning away from the stars to look at them. Stars may have been beautiful, bright and what many wished to be able to reach but it wasn't the case for him.

At that moment, looking at the monstrous form of his grandfather, he found beauty, no divinity not in the universe or in the belief of a god but by looking at him.

'The stars, I don't want to be like them,' he had thought while looking at his grandfather. 'If one day, I could become immensely vast and powerful, I wished I would be like you instead of them.'

That night, his grandfather and he watched the stars all night. At the coming of dawn, the demon king Amduscias, his grandfather faded before his eyes.

*scene*

'Thinking was becoming harder,' Jason reflected his mouth full of blood, his body laying in a puddle of it in the ancestral manor of the Amduscias clan "You are nothing but a bastard, worse, a half-blood one. Why?! What do you have to I didn't?! What do you have that your brother doesn't?!" he heard his father.

He pushed through the pain and tried to move one of his lambs "I was supposed to become the head of this clan now that he was gone! Your brother was supposed to become the heir!"

A painful chuckle escaped him. 'I wouldn't be able to protect you, my ass,' he thought. His grandfather had done one thing before leaving. He had transferred a part of his authority to Jason without him knowing it.

Because of this, according to the laws that had been established by the ancestors of the devil race, the demons, the original Amduscias was still alive and because he was still alive, it was impossible for his father to become the head of their clan. Jason was now at the age of fourteen before all devils, demons and governments the bearer of the mantle of King Amduscias.

It was not something capable of being removed. Even if Father tried to usurp him and become the new head of the clan like many devils did, it wouldn't change anything. The laws were made first by demons for demons. Devils were impacted, demons were not and he technically was one according to the metaphysical laws of the underworld.

Even bloodied the way he was, Jason couldn't find in himself the will to hate his father. If he had, the devil would have been dead before he could have even touched him.

"If you continue like this," he croaked with a mouth full of blood "you'll kill me and if you do, it will not be the other pure-blood devils that will execute all of you even if they wished they could. Gehenna itself would punish you, torturing you in an atrocious way like a sinner for all eternity," he told the devil more for the sake of his father than his.

"It's true that I can't kill you," his father recognized. "It doesn't have to be me that personally does it."

The devil walked toward his prone form. "Why?" he asked. 'Why could not you love?' he wanted to ask.

"Your mother," the older devil spoke "was supposed to be nothing but temporary fun, just a way to relax momentarily. I didn't even have to use magic to twist her mind. If you had seen her, so full of despair, of want, desiring from all of her being for someone to care about her. It was too easy and the way she broke down was such a delight," the devil spoke.

"I of course left the morning after before she woke up. I was so kind and such a gentleman that I left her ten dollars at her side. It was supposed to be the end. I already loved someone with whom I wanted to marry and finish my eternal life with so imagine my surprise when 9 months later, my father brought from the mortal world a child whose mother died in childbirth, a half-blood that he said wearing his blood, a half-blood that he fell in love at first glance with when he hated me, his own son, a half-blood, result of a lustful mistake," his father hissed.

"But today, I correct it. My father was there before to protect you but now he's gone." Jason felt himself begin to fall. "For once in your entire existence, make me happy by dying," his father told him before the teleportation circle he had fallen in and that had teleported his broken form into the sky closed.

'It hurts,' Jason admitted in the deepest part of his mind. He knew that one day, there were a lot of chances of something like this happening yet he had hoped for something he knew would never be real.

He could have stopped it at any moment but then what would have been the point, killing with his own hands his father?

'The stars, Grandfather,' he mused looking at them while falling. 'They are not as beautiful as they were.' They seemed dull, lifeless.

'I wish you were still there,' he thought before his falling form met the Earth like a falling star and everything turned dark.

*scene*

He could feel touch, careful, precise, caring. He opened his eyes with much difficulty to see at his bedside a black-haired girl with Hazel eyes who couldn't be older than he was.

She was looking at him with concern. What made it shocking and made him wonder why he was still alive was her nun outfit.

'So, that was his plan,' Jason thought. 'Making me fall in one of the territories of heaven while being injured. An injured devil in one of the strongholds of the Heavens was a sure death sentence.'

This is why he didn't understand how he was still alive, why he could feel that his injuries had been cleaned and bandaged. He should have been dead and a part of him yearned for it.

"Why?" he rasped.

He watched her eyes widen in shock. "You are already awake?".

She took a cup of water and tried to make him drink it. He looked at her with suspicion. His mouth stayed closed "I'm not trying to poison you or hurt you," she told him.

"If I had wanted to hurt you, I would have done so. I would have just left you bleeding and burning outside due to the holy energy suffusing most of this place."

She pushed again the cup of water toward his mouth and this time, he allowed himself to drink from it.

The liquid entered and with it, he felt less like a piece of coal and more like a living being. When the cup was empty, she removed it to put it on a table. "You didn't answer me. Why?" he asked her again.

He was a devil, a half-one, something considered worse in the eyes of the Heavens. He was the proof of the corruption of a human being, he was a devil with a human would and there were no greater abominations than maybe a Nephilim.

"Because it was the right thing," she answered.

"Most of your fellows would disagree with that," he pointed to her.

"I know but what's right and just is rarely accepted by most. I had thought about letting you die or calling an older exorcist to put you down," she revealed.

"It was before looking at you. I saw someone even younger than me. It was the kind of youth that couldn't be at a hundred per cent faked. That made me hesitate but what sealed the deal was something I never thought I would see, something we were taught was impossible, that could not happen. I saw tears on your face. You were crying even unconscious."

He watched how her eyes lit up with fervour. "Do you know what you did? You showed me that you had a soul. That what I was taught all my life could be wrong," she spoke.

"That way of thinking is dangerous at many levels. You are from the church. You're risking at best excommunion and at worst, execution. Also," he channelled his demonic energy into his eyes making them change shape "what is stopping me right now from hurting you. I'm a devil, you're a nun. It is a tale as old as time," he said in what he thought in a menacing way.

The thing was that she stayed smiling as if she wasn't before a being that could do easily monstrous things to her. "You just proved to me that I was right with each thing you did since you woke up. When I took the cup of water for you, I turned my back on purpose. Here you are trying to warn me, fearing for my safety when we just met. I see through what you're doing."

He looked at her for a moment before sighing and removing his grasp on his demonic energy. "It's better like this don't you think?" she said while smiling. "It would be awkward and totally uncool if you were discovered because you chose to make your eyes shine like a cat. My name is Maria. What is yours?"

He could not restrain the snort that escaped him. "Could you be more stereotypical?" he told her.

"Hey! It's not as if I chose," she said in false indignation. "Every woman here is either named Maria or Theresa or Grace," she said the last bane as if she was swallowing some kind of poison.

"Jason," he spoke.

"What?" she said in puzzlement.

"Jason Amduscias is my name," he told her.

"Nice to meet you, Jason," she told him. She took a thinking expression "Amduscias, I already heard that name," she spoke to herself more than to him.

"He was one of the 72 demons of the Ars Goetia. He was one of the surviving angels that rebelled with Lucifer against your god and that survived," he spoke unable to hide the pride and admiration he felt for his grandfather.

"I see who that is," she said excitedly as if she had found the answer to a difficult text. "A unicorn, your ancestor was a unicorn," she spoke as if she had found the secrets of the universe.

"A unicorn?" he sputtered in surprise and dismay. Maybe it was a good thing that his grandfather was dead. The slayer of millions, an archdemon reduced to an unicorn.

"What you said is so wrong and false," he said more to himself them her.

"Didn't he have the face of a horse and a horn?" she asked him.

"Yes, he had. That was the form he had chosen to use when interacting with mortals and beings not capable of withstanding his true form" Jason agreed reluctantly already knowing what kind of conclusion the girl was making in her own head.

If only his grandfather had chosen another one, Jason would not be here defending the fact that he wasn't an unicorn.

"If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck," she sang.

"Nothing that I say will change what you think?" He asked even though he already knew the answer.

"Nope," she answered. "Let me tell you where you are before I forget again. Welcome to the city of Redgrave in Alabama! She announced her arms open as if she was presenting the salvation of the human race

"Sweet, I'm an American state full of inbred. Well, it could not be worse than hell." America itself was mostly a no-go zone for all the other factions of the Abrahamic Pantheon except for heaven.

The president of the United States before swearing before the nation swore before the remaining Archangel and God. 99% of the United States was controlled and dominated by Heaven.

Most of the native gods had been killed, and murdered trying to defend the tribes that had been worshipping them.

It happened sometimes that the United States was infiltrated, and manipulated by another supernatural being than the angels like what Satan Beelzebub did with the two nuclear bombs on Japan.

"That's a stereotype," she screamed. "It's not because someone is from Alabama that they were probably some inbreeding in their lineage!

Jason looked at her lazily "Let me guess, your parents were direct cousins," he told her.

"That is false! They were half-siblings!" Her face became pale when she realized the words she had just said.

"I see, this is why you saved me. Because you are stupid," he spoke.

She looked mortified and maybe it was his devil's side but it felt good to tease her "Don't worry, now that I know, I'll do my best to try to accommodate your intellectual slowness."

"You were kinder and way prettier when you were unconscious," she spoke under her breath.

"Pretty? I'm manly," he told her in outrage.

"Nope. You look more girly than most girls do. When I first saw you, I thought you were one," she told him.

What she said wasn't false but It was not his fault that it was how his demonic energy and his genes made him look. If he could have chosen, he would have been born with the head of a horse and a horn just like his grandfather.

One day, he will find a way to become so masculine that even the gigantic Archangel Metatron or even the god of strength Kratos would look like wimps.

The sound of bells brought him back to reality. "I have to leave," the nun said looking panicked. "If they learn that I wasn't in my room that night, I'm fucked," she swore.

"You're a nun, shouldn't nuns never be swearing," he told her.

"Don't begin, if you knew how much I was told this. Anyway, I'm leaving. I left some food in the fridge."

She ran to the door and left. At least, that's what he thought. One second later, she was back, her head peeking in the entrance. "This cabin is isolated. You can leave if you want but it would be nice if you stayed. Talking with someone different, with you was a pleasant experience," she told him before closing the door and leaving.

Sunlight rays pierced through one of the curtains and illuminated his right hand. "So this is the true sun," he whispered.

He didn't know what he should do. He could go back to the underworld and his father and Jason's stepmother and brother would be punished but it was something he knew he would find no satisfaction in.

Maybe, for now, he would stay here in this cabin. He didn't know what the future reserved for him but he wished, no, Jason prayed to whoever would listen to take pity. He was already exhausted, going forward in itself, he knew a monumental and arduous task. He prayed to a dead demon, to his grandfather he knew was forever gone. The feeling of comfort almost as if he was still here made Jason Amduscias cry for the first time since the death of his grandfather.

*scene*

He was still there when she came back at night and it didn't change for days after, weeks after or even months after.

It was some new kind of normality he was clinging to. Something drove him, that gave him a goal, something to hole for the future, at least, that's how at the beginning, he saw their conversation.

It had been too easy and fast for them to become close but there was something different between the two of them.

Before her eyes, he wasn't a half-blood devil, he wasn't a bastard of the Amduscias bloodline. He was Jason.

He learned through the conversations he had with the nun that hidden under her clumsiness was a sharp and vast mind.

She came each day talking about her experiences, about her days, about her woes. It made him think about his grandfather and him.

With the way the nun poured her heart at him, it would have been easy to manipulate her. It was sometimes as if he knew her more than he knew himself.

Honestly, he was glad that she trusted him. It made him feel useful as if he mattered. In the same way, she gained something by sharing her life, the same way he did when she talked to him.

It meant that he was needed, that there was an individual in this universe other than his grandfather to whom he could matter.

They turned from acquaintances or friends to what could be considered lovers. They didn't really put a label or a definition of what they were.

Both of them didn't want to. It would make it more real than it was. It would be something that They would not have been able to come back from. The only thing they needed to know was that they were Each other's person.

He had known since the beginning of their strange friendship turned situationship that it would be just a question before the church of Maria understood that there was something afoot.

He feared that day, the day where the tranquillity and serenity he had been able to find would if not disturbed be destroyed.

At least, their utopia, what they had lasted 5 years. It could be seen as a miracle. For five years, he, a devil lived in what could be called sacred ground, had a relationship with a nun and he wasn't discovered.

It began of course with another nun called Grace. He understood now the hatred that Maria had for the name.

She was always talking about the fact that another nun with this name had been nothing more than what could be called a cross between a nuisance and a bully.

The other nun was the kind of person who loved and yearned to be at the top, be the best at everything and that was ready to do everything so that people would never rise over her.

Maria had apparently garnered the attention of an angel because of her kindness, her heart and the other Nun called Grace who had never been mentioned or noticed by one of the messengers of the Abrahamic god learned it and became jealous.

It is how one night, watching the sky together and talking they were discovered by Exorcists.

He was able to escape even though he was wounded but what had truly angered him had been the fact that he had not been able to flee with Maria.

The last expression he had seen on her face had been despair and sadness. It was as if watching someone realize that they were on the verge of losing everything.

At best, Maria would be exiled, banished from the church and she would be barred from entering after her death in heaven. The rules of the white omnipotent god were few but their breach were unforgivable.

What kind of life would she have? She had given all of herself to a god she had never seen. He has seen with his own eyes how her eyes lit up with delight when she talked of the church.

It was a punishment worse than death because it was condemning someone who believed in being cast away from everything they loved, knew and cherished in this life and the next.

At worst, they would kill her. If he did nothing, he would lose the person he loved and with the rules they had broken, he knew that her would would not rise to a heavenly abode.

He wished he wasn't a half-blood. If he had been a pure-blood devil, surely his father would have loved him. If he had been 100% human, Maria would not be on the verge of losing everything.

He looked at the stars in the night sky. "All of this time, I had turned toward you, trying to escape from reality, trying to reach what I thought was the unreachable. My grandfather told me that I would be as bright as you, as strong as you and I did something I had never done before. I didn't believe him. My grandfather never lied to me."

"Stars die, everything eventually fades," he whispered.

Those had been the words of his grandfather and they were nothing more true than this. He had found something worth it and he refused now that he had found to relinquish it.

The gashes in his back healed lightning writing from them and mending the skin. He turned toward where he knew was the church.

He crouched and jumped crossing the distance of many kilometres between the church and him falling on one knee in the courtyard of the church, the courtyard where all the members of the church of Maria were also present. All of them became silent as if Satan himself had dared to personally visit them.

His gaze fell on her. He could see injuries and bruises marring her skin. Her hair had been cut leaving her bald. Her eyes looked sunken as if all life had been sucked from her soul. She was forced onto her knees surrounded by exorcists with their holy weapons activated.

She was the first one to see him. Her eyes widened "What are you doing here. You should have left," she yelled at him.

"I probably should," Jason acknowledged "but I guess you rubbed on me."

"You! Devil, how dare you intrude on this holy land!" an old bald priest spat at him.

Around him, he looked at how The church members began to surround him from all sides, looking at him with caution as if he was a panther, prayers muttered under their breath, their holy energy rising on the surface.

He could feel a buzz on his skin as if he was too close to a fire. The Holy Light of the heavens was less a weakness, a poison and more a curse from the Father of Lucifer to all the instruments of war of his rebel child.

"Maria," he spoke. "Everything that happened, that will happen is my sin! My sin alone!"

"Please, don't do what I think you're going to do," she begged him.

A priest had enough of waiting and shot a bullet at him. The bullet stopped its movement in the air. He saw twitches in the hands of the other exorcists.

He watched from the corner how his eyes how the exorcists threw themselves at him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them back. "I am a devil Maria. It's in my nature to be selfish," he told her before he erupted in lightning.

In a swift move, he disappeared to reappear between the murderous mass of exorcists and used his lightning coating his arm with it, cutting through flesh and bone with disgustingly ease.

Some experienced exorcists were able to escape from his attack or shield themselves with holy energy.

That was an error. It meant that they were still and stillness meant in battle death. He rushed toward one of the exorcists.

To the credit of the exorcist, his eyes were almost able to follow him. The exorcist tried to shield himself counting on his holy barrier.

Unfortunately for him, Jason would not let himself be refused. He was thunder, he was violence and nothing could not cave under his might.

The shield broke the moment he touched it. His fist continued hitting the exorcist in the face and removing his head from it.

Jason watched in slow motion as the head bent in a way a head shouldn't and popped out of the neck of the exorcist. The moment the head had left the body of the exorcist, Jason chose to move.

He rushed toward what seemed to be a young exorcist. The other boy could not perceive him. His eyes were full of terror, of fear. Jason felt pity for a moment before squashing it and going through the young man at full speed vaporizing him.

He glided on the ground as if he was skating more than walking. He was the butcher and they were the pigs at a slaughterhouse.

He cut through holy energy, bit through flesh, vaporized and cooked skin and human flesh both from inside and outside.

Around him, the blood hadn't fallen on the ground. From his perspective, it was as if a halo of blood was surrounding him as if a deity of blood and slaughter recognized him as one of his heralds.

He allowed himself to stop, to deactivate momentarily the power that he had inherited from his bloodline.

Gallons of blood and guts fell on the ground like a twisted macabre rain. He felt it fall on his face, his hair and on Maria and the two exorcists that were still at her side.

He tried to ignore the gaze that the nun directed at him. He knew that he would surely lose her after this bloody display but it was fine. He preferred her alive even if she hated him than dead barred from the heavens suffering like a sinner in the underworld.

One of the priests took from his back a glowing shotgun with crosses engraved on it and tried to shoot him. Jason cut the bullet with one of his nails.

He began to walk slowly toward the two remaining priests and Maria. The priest with the shotgun was beginning to be frantic. He pulled on the trigger again and again and again.

Jason cut them all with indifference. He could see fear growing on their faces. The other priest seeing the futility of the actions of his comrade took a knife from under his robe and put it on the throat of Maria.

Jason stopped. "It is for her that you came back. If you make another move, I will slit her throat. She will directly go to hell barred from heaven, tortured for all eternity!" the priest yelled.

Maria didn't look scared. He would instead say that she looked saddened more than anything else. "All of them are dead and it is because of you Maria. We raised you, gave you everything and you rewarded us with desolation and death!" the priest told her. Her gaze fell on the ground where a piece of brain matter had flown.

"I don't know what kind of blasphemy you did to make him care but it is something that will be the cause of his downfall and yours after," the priest monologue.

"Stay still or she perishes," the priest told him. "Devils are all monsters. You destroy and ruin everything. Even with how young you seem, look at the carnage you brought. They had families, friends and you robbed them away from their families. Look!"

Jason's gaze swept over the mutilated corpses, to a field of dismembered cadaver. Agony and fear were painted on their features, proof that their demise had been a brutal one.

"If I had to do it, I would do so," he told the priest. "I don't care right now about Evil or Good right now. I don't care about consequences as long as I am only the only one affected. I only care about Maria."

A vein throbbed on the head of the priest with the knife. "What are you doing? What are you waiting for? Shoot him! He won't do anything".

The priest was right that Jason didn't do anything to defend himself. The bullet entered in collision with his skin and was the one to break.

"There are two things you need to know," Jason spoke softly. "You were able to hurt me before because I believed that I could be hurt by you." When a parent says to their children that nothing can hurt them unless they want, they are either dismissive and overestimating their child even though they believe what they said which create problems down the road or they are right.

He should have known that his grandfather was being literal When he told him this. Belief and power were the only things that devils needed. His grandfather had told him this many times and he had forgotten.

He began slowly to walk toward the priests and Maria, his steps echoing in the courtyard.

"I warned you!" the priest with the knife spoke before trying to slit the throat of Maria. He found himself unable to. He tried again and again but it was as if the knife could not cut anything.

"What kind of sorcery is this?" the priest said in shock and fear.

"The demonic one," he answered him before two bolts of lightning fell from the sky turning the priests into burnt husks.

He kneeled before Maria and with the knife that had fallen from the hands of the priest cut through her bindings.

"Why?" she asked him. "Why did you do that? They raised me and cared for me. Maybe I shouldn't have been born. All of this was because of me."

"None of those things were your fault," he told her softly.

"Those happened because of me Because I love you," he told her. She looked as if she had been struck, surprise etched on her face. It was after all the first time one of them had told it to the other.

"I don't need to you accept it, acknowledge it or anything else. Everything that happened here happened because of me, not of you Maria." Slowly, he put the knife that he had grabbed in the shaking hands of the nun.

"I will understand if you don't want to see me ever again. I will also understand if you want to avenge yourself." Lightning crackled around the knife embedding into it like a dark poison making it take an obsidian color.

"This knife will now be able to injure supernatural beings. It means that you'll be able to use it to protect yourself and that a stab of this knife in my heart would kill me," he told her.

She inspected the knife in her grasp turning it to see it from different angles. "I just lost almost everything," she spoke softly.

"The people I called father, mother, siblings, they all died to you, the half devil I had saved, my family died at the hands of the one I love and if what we hadn't done before didn't ensure it, now it is clear that I'm also barred forever from heaven."

"You are selfish. I had told you to leave but you did. You're also cruel Jason. You want me to destroy with my own hands the last thing that makes me happy. You want me to kill you so that you could find some absolution so that you could clear your consciousness. It is too easy."

She let the knife fall from her hands. It fell into the bloodstained ground and sank into it as if it was butter.

She looked at him in the eyes. He tried to turn away from her gaze but the appearance of her left hand on his face stopped him from doing so. "You're going to live Jason. We're going to live. I will never forget and forgive what you did. Your atonement will be me. You took everything so you'll become my everything Jason Amduscias," she told him with steel in her voice.

"It is understood?" she asked him.

"I understood Maria," he answered.

"Good," she said before kissing him. He felt her bit into his lips. He allowed her to make him bleed.

She retreated slowly away from the kiss. "Jason, let's leave," she spoke softly. The steel and the seriousness that had inhabited her were now gone. She now looked fragile as if she was a frail plant that would be unrooted at the first gust of wind.

He took her slowly into his carrying her as Maria was something made of glass. From his back, demonic bat wings erupted.

With a swap of them, they left the ground of the church. Behind them, the scene of the slaughter and the tragedy was engulfed by a bolt of lightning.

*scene*

They tried to never stay in one place after what happened. They moved, travelled and lived in different states and cities each month.

Even though he hadn't let an alive witness, Jason knew that it would suffice for one of the souls of the members of the church that he had destroyed to reach Heaven for the angels to know what had happened.

The relationship that he had with Maria also changed due to what happened. When she sometimes looked at him, he could only see disgust and hatred. Other times, the emotion that was present was love.

He bore it all without complaint. That was what he deserved after all. Maria had chosen to die, she had chosen and Jason took it from her.

Jason took from her all of those she considered family. He changed even though it had not been his intention her life completely.

Right now, they were for the moment staying in Los Angeles. 99% of the United States was controlled by the Heaven faction. What they didn't control was ironically Los Angeles, the city of angels that was under the control of the Grigori.

What was good or bad depending on your circumstances with fallen angels was that they valued only things that they would see as valuable.

As long as you gave them what they wanted, they would be ready to do everything you asked them.

Jason had just before entering the city notified one of the fallen angels guarding the city that he was technically the head of a devil pure-blood clan for the city and all its luxuries be awarded to them.

He had to promise in exchange for safe passage now and in the future one favour to the Head governor of the Grigori, Azazel, one of his grandfather's brothers.

He could see Maria sitting at the edge of the roof of their hotel. He didn't fear because he knew that the protection that had been lit by the fallen angels would ensure that nothing bad would happen in case she fell.

She was looking at the city and its lights. He walked toward her and sat at her side. They stayed in silence.

"I don't hate you," she said softly breaking the silence.

"What?"

"I don't hate you," she repeated. "I never did."

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked her.

She answered him with another question "Do you know that you talk while you sleep?" she spoke.

"In your sleep, you were begging me to not hate you and honestly it hurt," she told him. "There is only one person I hate and this is me. What I said to you that day at the church was because I wanted you to live."

She turned toward him "All those times we talked, all those times that we were together. They made me realize something, Jason. You stayed alive first because of your grandfather and when he died, you had wanted to join him. You let your father almost kill you. He would have if I wasn't the one to find you. If I hadn't said what I had told you, I fear what would have happened to you Jason."

He tried to ignore the butterflies dancing I'm his stomach and the arm feeling that he felt inside. He would focus on them later "The reason why you hate yourself, is it because of what I did that day in the church?" he asked her.

"It's partially the case," she admitted. "The truth was that it happened because of me. It was because I fell for one of the seven capital sins. I fell into greed," she whispered.

"I wanted both you and the church. I wanted both of you forever in my life when I knew that it was something impossible. I stayed indecisive doing nothing hoping things would never have to change," she told him "And this is why all of this happened."

"Actually, I'm lying. I didn't forbid you to take your life. I didn't choose to live because I feared that you would die. I did it for me. I did it because I wanted to live with you, Jason. I did it because I was scared of what waited for me on the other side," she revealed to him.

He turned his gaze back toward the city. With his eyes, he was able to see through every detail of the members of the crowd.

He watched what seemed to be a group of young girls dressed for what seemed to be a party.

He watched a balding man rubbing what seemed to be a proposal ring in nervousness.

He watched how two toddlers ran and played screaming around what was clearly their father both looked happy and exhausted.

"Why aren't you saying something, Jason? Are you mad?" she asked him.

"Not at all," he answered honestly. He felt as if a weight had been removed from his shoulders, as if he was a disabled elderly man now able through a miracle to walk.

"I'm just happy you're not mad at me and that you didn't change too much due to what happened. You're still as stupid as ever," he joked.

"What did you say?!" Maria said in shock and outrage.

"That you were as stupid as before," he answered without a beat. "It is not wrong to want, to desire."

He turned back toward her "You were taught all your life that it was wrong when there is nothing more human than desiring something. It is not you that was at fault. It is this world. In a perfect world, in a better one, it wouldn't matter that I am half devil and that you're from the church so don't be angry or hateful toward yourself, do it toward this world."

"This world, do you think that it could change, become better?" she asked him.

"I think it could," he lied his gaze moving away from hers.

"You're a really bad liar, especially with the fact that you're a devil. Shouldn't you be all suave and with a perfect silver tongue?" she teased him.

"A lot of devils are bad liars," he defended himself. "It's just that they are never talked about."

"Sure," she said with a smile.

He sighed "You don't believe it, do you?" he asked her.

"Nope."

"Jason," she said his name gaining back his attention.

"Yes?"

"I love you," she told him. "I'm happy even with everything that I met you," she told Jason while smiling.

The moonlight illuminated her features bathing her in a silver light and making her appear in the eyes of Jason as something divine. "May I kiss you?" he asked her.

Her answer was to kiss him.

*scene*

'It wasn't supposed to end like this,' Jason mused. Maybe he was cursed to only lose what he held dear in his heart. He was before a grave. Here lays Maria Amduscias, beloved wife and mother. His grip over the bundle of clothes in his hands tightened.

He knew due to the fact that he was a devil that the would of Maria wasn't there. The multicoloured nebulae that he came to recognize as her soul were nowhere to be seen. The only thing left was a cold rotting corpse yet he was still here maybe in search of catharsis.

They had thought that if one of them lost their lives, it would be because of a confrontation with a supernatural being. Maybe an angel bringing divine justice, by fallen angels betraying them, by devils hired by his father or maybe by any other supernatural being that hated his race.

Childbirth, it had been the cause of the death of Maria. Something so mundane, so ordinary had been the reason for the death of the woman he had loved and had been lucky to marry.

They had been able through some exchanged favours with the fallen angels to find a secluded place where they would not have to fear Heaven's wrath.

Their dream of beginning for once to live and not only survive had ceased to exist just when they could reach it.

It was in the nature of devils to destroy. This was why healing powers or items were so important for their race. This was why the Phenex clan was so rich.

Maybe it was because of the demonic nature of their child, maybe it was because of another indiscernible reason but Maria bled to Death in a hospital bed.

He knew that he could have saved her if he had used an evil piece. He would have just needed to go back to the underworld and due to his status as the new head of the Amduscias clan, he knew that he would have received them from Satan Beelzebub immediately.

He had told this to a dying Maria. Her answer was to beg him not to do it. She told him that she wanted to die as a human. She asked him to respect for once her wish.

He was the devil and she was an ex nun yet she had been the more cruel amongst them. He knew that he loved her, what her loss would do to him. They just had a child, a newborn that would never know his mother.

He had in his arms someone who would be completely dependent on him for survival, who would be shaped and moulded by him.

The only parental figure he had was his grandfather. He never knew his mother and from his father received only Pain and heartbreak. How was he supposed to be a good parent when he never truly had one?

He looked at the child in his arms. Maria had been the one to choose his name before dying. She had chosen Nicholas. She found it fitting.

He looked at the sleeping form of Nicholas already showing snow-white hair on his head even though he was a baby.

"I don't what I'm honestly doing," he spoke softly to the sleeping form of his child. "I'm far from being the strongest or the most clever. Bringing you to this world could be even called a disservice due to how harsh and cruel this world is. I can only promise you one thing, to try my best so that you can be happy."

He turned toward the grave "I'll take care of our child. I'll stay with them until the day they feel that they can safely confront the world by themselves no matter how long it takes. When I finish this, I'll come to find your soul."

He turned away from the grave "You were one of the best that ever happened to me, Maria. See you soon," he spoke before leaving behind the grave where the body of the woman he loved rested.

*scene*

[MEDIA=youtube]ZKEJyDEmlJU[/MEDIA]

He had failed, his child dead and for this, Jason would make the world pay in fucking blood he thought before breaking through the pillars of the Earth controlled by his enemy.

He weaved on the left, flying in a perpendicular way. He tightened his grip on his spear and threw it at the exorcist.

A slasher grin full of teeth was present on the face of the Saint. From the Earth around him, he shaped a sword batting away Jason's spear his sword exploding in his grasp and shredding his skin.

Jason appeared before the exorcist. Around them, the Earth was moving as if to protect its master. He turned to slash the throat of his enemy, a spear appearing in his hand just before he finished his spin.

The ground moved like a liquid and appeared before the Saint taking the blow successfully protecting him by letting himself be destroyed.

A new sword appeared in the grasp of the priest. He made a smashing movement with the sword.

The instincts of Jason blared in his head. He followed them moving to the right, at his side, the Earth opened in two as if it was an ocean before Moses.

It continued its path of destruction toward the horizon where Jason lost sight of it. He turned back his attention to the Saint who was making another slash toward him.

The Earth also hadn't stayed idle trying to bury Jason into its wild grasp. His body turned into lightning losing sense of the rules of the

Mortal world, the world taking an obscure tint into his eyes.

With a push from his legs, he left the ground back to the sky. The saint had been able it seems to deduce that Jason would move because Jason realized that the place targeted had never been where he was instant before.

The saint had been able to deduce where Jason would be moving next, his slash shimmering and cutting through atoms coming toward Jason.

Turning into lightning he knew would not allow him like last time to dodge so he met the attack with one of his one. He summoned from the dark sky over him A black lightning bolt, hotter and bigger than most mortals had ever seen or imagined.

Billions of volts fell from the sky in a nightmarish sound colliding against the attack of the Saint.

The attacks touched and the world screamed in agony. The sky and the Earth opened. Jason was sent flying away, a mountain stopping him. He turned to his right and was greeted by the destroyed face of one of the founding fathers. He rose painfully and ignored the screams of panic and fear around him.

His gaze was focused, only turned toward his enemy. He could see from his vision that it was the same thing for his enemy.

The Saint had crossed the border and was now in the rubble of what seemed to be a governmental building.

The Saint's skin had been flayed due to the speed they had moved, his flesh ruptured and bones broken yet Jason could see the Saimt healing slowly.

There were only two ways to win against a regenerator. The first one was the bring such an amount of strength that he could do nothing against it, so that the regenerator would be erased in one instant.

The second one was to bring so much damage to the enemy that his healing factor would not be able to keep up.

Jason took a running stance, his gaze focused only on his enemy and pushed with his leg sending himself flying faster than sound breaking behind him Mount Rushmore and turning it and its surroundings into rubble.

The still regenerating Saint and Jason met in the sky. "When He thunders, the waters in the heavens are in turmoil, and He causes the clouds to rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain and brings the wind from His storehouses," the voice of the Saint boomed.

Jason met resistance in his control over the sky as if he were battling against a foreign authority. The Saint thought that his holy words could help him against Jason.

Such a grievous error. They met in the sky, swords and spears in hands. They butchered through each other.

Jason felt the sword of the Saint bite for the first time since the beginning of their fight into his flesh. More than that, the wound left imbued into a veins-burning fire yet Jason didn't falter.

With his slash, he opened the stomach of his opponent and made his intestines hang in the air. He used them as handles, grabbing them and ripping them from the flesh of the Saint before kicking him in the neck making his body bend in a way one shouldn't.

He finished his combo by head-butting the Saint in the face sending him flying toward the Ocean.

It wouldn't be completely right to say that there existed only two ways to win against a regenerator. There was a third one and it was madness, madness through pain, madness through helplessness.

Jason's wings batted behind him sending him flying toward the ocean, behind him, a path through the clouds appeared.

He could feel the holy energy of the Saint which meant that he wasn't yet dead, an error that Jason would be soon correcting.

He saw the holy man standing at the surface of the ocean. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers," the Saint spoke.

A gigantic wave taller than a skyscraper rushed toward him. He could feel holy energy sufficing the gigantic wave.

Jason gritted his teeth, coated his right arm in lightning and punched the wave with all of his might. Jason watched how the atoms composing the water split violently.

He hurriedly erected a shield made of lightning around him or at least tried to. The priest chose that moment to attack trying to stab through Jason's heart with a sword.

Jason knew that the Holy energy of the saint would ensure that his sword would bypass his shield. A stab into the Heart would surely mean losing.

Holy energy was already running amok through his flesh and his veins. He chose to dodge, to withstand the maddening eruption of energy that would be released by the atoms of the wave he had punched.

Not an instant later, he was filled with agony. He felt his bones break, his flesh being set aflame, his body being sent ragdolling Lucifer only knew where.

He had a brief respite from his agony when His back met with something sturdy. He stayed down in a puddle of his blood.

The flames that were covering him had disappeared. A laugh escaped him when he realized where he was, the absurdity of it.

He could see the Earth in all its glory. He could see a mushroom cloud covering a part of the sky and bathing the Earth in an eery red glow.

He was now in space. The craters at his side confirmed to him that he was indeed on the moon. Here, the stars looked closer, as if he could touch and grab them.

He swore that he could see standing at the corner of his vision his grandfather, his wife and his son. He felt exhausted. He wanted to close his eyes, to give up. "Nicholas, Maria, Grandfather, I am exhausted. I am not sure I can make it. I'm so sorry."

He blinked and when he opened his eyes back, they were surrounding him. They were looking at him "What are you all doin-".

He was cut by what felt like a shock. Another ran through him. It turned from sporadic to regular, beating to a melody he could not fully understand.

He felt strength feel him, the ache and the pain he felt slowly disappearing. "How?" he found himself asking.

They were dead. It wasn't supposed to happen. It was more than a hallucination. It felt real. No, it was real.

"Death, true death is being forgotten former from the world of the living Jason" Maria spoke softly kneeling and cradling his head into her arms. "Death's domain, nothingness, hell, it doesn't matter. As long as you are here, we will never be completely gone."

His son walked and sat at his side. He was holding in his hands what seemed to be a star. He placed it on his chest of Jason and slowly, it began to sink in. "I wanted to give you this the day of your birthday but hey, better now than never right?" the boy spoke.

"I love you," he said to the ghost of his child. "I love all of you and I'm sorry, so sorry that I wasn't able to delay if not making all of you avoid your ends," he spoke softly.

He rose on his knees and slowly stood. "You'll always be there with me?" he asked them.

His grandfather was the one to answer him "Of course Jason. Someone Living is a celebration for his loved ones who passed away."

The fight between the Saint and him had only lasted one minute before he was sent flying to the moon. He could not feel anymore The time limit that significating his soon end.

His demonic energy was beating to a symphony he could almost hear, stronger, fiercer, wilder than it had ever been. Jason would live.

He would win and live not only for himself but for all of his loved ones. "It is time for me to end this," Jason told them.

"What will you do after?" Maria asked him.

"Patricide," he answered her without missing a beat. "I've left my throne empty for too long. I had been too passive. I can feel war coming what happened to me was a symptom, an announcing sign. I'll change this world so that the one that will rise from the ashes of this one will be a better one."

He felt them disappear from his awareness. He put his right hand on his beating heart. "Overload," he whispered. He felt something crawl and grow under his skin at the level of his forehead, pierce through the flesh in an explosion of blood. Pain was absent. He felt his nails turn into claws and watched how his skin turned Scarlet. He knew that if he had looked in a mirror, the vision that would be meeting him would be the one of a stereotypical demon.

He turned toward the Earth where he could still feel the Holy energy of his opponent. The explosion instead of sending him in the air like it had done with Jason had instead buried kilometres under the crust of the Earth. The part of the Ocean they had been in had been vaporized leaving an unnatural gap, a void that couldn't be filled by the world.

Jason could see him extirping himself from the underground cavity full of magma he had fallen in. The Saint looked like a burnt skeleton, an abomination that could not be called human.

The saint was still regenerating but it was clear that it was happening in a slow rhythm. The Saint was for the first time vulnerable.

The saint looked upward and Jason knew that the Gaze of the Saint had met his. He saw the Saint shake with what was clearly barely restrained anger. The mask calm and aloofness he was exhibiting at the beginning was clearly now gone.

The skeleton opened his mouth and chanted words of power, something that should not be possible with his lack of tongue. Jason even with a distance of a hundred of thousands of kilometres heard him.

"Deliver me from my enemies, O God; protect me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from evildoers," The saint sang.

Jason simply willed for a spear made of plasma, of stars to appear in his right arm. He understood now. Stars and lightning, at their root, were the same thing. This had been the reason for the attraction of his son and him toward them. This was Why his grandfather had told him that he would one day shine brighter than them.

He felt a divine presence surround him, trying to crush him, to erase him. He broke through it with a negligent movement of his spear.

He put his spear before him, pushed on his heels and jumped toward the Earth. The glow of his spear grew and grew. The spear drank from the light of the sun, from the Heat of his entrance into the Mesosphere.

The Saint sent him flying toward him towers of metals imbued with holy energy. Jason pierced through them.

The Saint tried to crush him with the weight of the skin. Jason continued non-hindered as if nothing had happened.

The saint sent thorns, giant constructs into armours, Jason cut through all of them and continued his fall toward the Saint.

The saint understood that nothing that he would be throwing at Jason would be able to hurt him so he tried to escape by burying himself into the ground.

"Oh no, you don't!" Jason yelled. Threads of lightning appeared at the tips of his fingers, cut through the air like hunting snakes and closed

Around the head of the Saint. Jason yanked uprooting the Saint toward him.

"The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped" the Saint screamed in panic.

Jason's spear entered into contact with the hastily erected shield. A shockwave erupted at the impact making the world shake and cave around them. The spear of Jason and the shield of the saint were creating a deafening melody of discordant notes.

"Can't you see?" the Saint yelled. "As long as he is with me, you won't win. This is how reality is!"

"I'm a demon," Jason told the saint. He pushed and the holy shield cracked. "We spit at reality and the rules he made".

Another push and the barrier broke. In a desperate bid for survival, the saint tried to impale Jason by trying to stab him with the thorns in his skin. They slid harmlessly against Jason's skin.

"I told you that I would kill you," he said softly to the Saint before throwing the spear into the chest of the saint.

The impaled saint was sent careening in pain breaking through Earth layer after Earth layer after layer until he came out of the other side of the planet before the spear in his chest exploded bathing the world in a kaleidoscopic glow.