Apollyon’s nostrils flared as he caught Serenity’s scent. He frowned and seemed to shake his head slightly. “You smell of Wrath but you do not look it. Wrath draws only lightly on the Suras bloodlines but clearly you are not purely of Wrath. Well, so much the better; Wrath was never much for conversation. You wished to speak?”

Serenity did not like Apollyon’s attitude, but he kept his temper under control. It would not help to shout at the other man. Demon. Whatever he was.

That thought made Serenity change what he was going to say. He’d originally intended to repeat his earlier request to negotiate, but he couldn’t resist a different question now. “You talk like you created the Children of Passion, yet you smell like a demon lord yourself. Why?”

Apollyon looked startled at the question. Serenity took that as a small victory. “Where did you find that name?”

Serenity smiled and shrugged. He knew just how annoying that could be. Perhaps it would tweak Apollyon into talking.

Apollyon waved the question away. “No matter. It was commonly known, once; you must have found some old source. How much did it tell you of the genius who created the Children? Did it tell you how he died tragically at the treachery of the Lord of Beasts, who did not want his control diminished?”

Serenity shook his head. He’d clearly hit an old wound of Apollyon’s. “It didn’t say anything about that.” At least, the message he had from Honoria didn’t; it was possible the Broken Mirror had a lot of detail that Serenity didn’t. He rather doubted it, though; that wasn’t what the Broken Mirror kept. It might well have information on how the creation was done, but any information on why would be limited to short summaries.

Apollyon snorted. “Of course it didn’t; if it did, Phorus would have killed whoever wrote it. No, the truth is simple. At Phorus’s encouragement, one of my creations killed me to take my place. What he did not know is that I am not so easy to kill, for in killing me, I took my creation’s place and left him in mine.”

That made almost no sense. In the back of Serenity’s head, something bothered him; the story lined up all too well with the stories of the Night Fire that Blaze told. They were stories of the creator of the diehar, beings who were not their bodies but instead possessed them. The Night Fire seemed to like to leave puzzles behind, to die and yet escape; it lined up all too well.

Serenity wanted to ask if he’d figured it out, but he restrained himself. If he had and they fought, he might be giving away an advantage. He’d certainly have to be extremely careful to avoid having the same thing happen to him that Apollyon had apparently done to others.

Come to think of it, was that why Apollyon seemed to have been able to live so long? It could easily explain why he didn’t feel as strong as Serenity had expected. That might or might not matter; it wasn’t an area Serenity was all that knowledgeable in. Undead creatures that took others’ bodies remade them in their own image; some became weaker and some did not. It was hard to say what an intellect swap like the diehar’s would do.

Apollyon chuckled, then grinned. It looked sinister on his sharp face, and Serenity didn’t think that was simply due to his features. “That can’t be the only question you have for your elder? Come in, relax, we can talk.”

Serenity followed Apollyon into the next room. It was built on the same scale as the doorway, to match Apollyon himself. Unlike the first room, it was neither austere nor modern; instead, it seemed to be furnished with oversized couches and small tables; Serenity wondered what Apollyon did in the room, since it looked like a room built for company but Serenity didn’t know of any other company on Apollyon’s scale.

“You asked what I wanted?” Apollyon sat on one of the couches and waved at Serenity to take any of the others. He waited until Serenity sat to speak again. “I want it all, like anyone else. I’m no fool; I know no one can have everything. So this is about what we each bring in terms of power and what we’ll each get out of it. I have no desire to rule overtly; I gather you do not either.”

Serenity shook his head. He had no desire to rule. He also didn’t agree with Apollyon that everyone wanted everything; he was quite willing to be content with his family and his passions.

Apollyon didn’t wait to hear about Serenity’s quibbles. “What I want the most is to create again; yes, my children are great and will aid me in my tasks, but that is not all. No, I must be safe. Right now, I am not safe; the Voice knows too much. I must have protection.”

Serenity frowned at that. “The Voice doesn’t hunt people.”

Apollyon barked a laugh. “The Voice - Order’s Voice - does what the Order wants. And that means that it does what the Councilors want. That is why I hid in a place the Voice did not go, for all that it stunted and twisted my growth, prevented me from truly practicing my craft for millenia. Do you know how horrifying that is, to limit myself to working only with the crudest and least of beings? To not be able to create children and be stuck with only toys? To have to work with beings that have been improved only by chance and not design?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The more Apollyon said the word “children,” the more it curdled in Serenity’s midsection. “You mean intelligent tools, don’t you?”

Apollyon’s grin widened. “The more intelligent, the better, as long as they are loyal! A disloyal tool is the worst, as it can turn in your hand. That is why breeding is so important; embed the right imperatives and you have everything. My children are almost perfect. They will obey, they want to obey. I left a path to the top; I had to. You took that path; you know it well.”

Apollyon’s voice held a pattern that made Serenity uneasy somehow; it seemed to try to pull him in, to get him to listen with his whole being. Something about Serenity rebelled from that feeling and he watched as Apollyon seemed to be covered in a sort of blurred mist. “The path from the deepest to the highest led you well, led you here, led you to me. One can rule. And so we must choose: will it be you or I? We all know which it should be, so yield to me-”

“No.” Serenity didn’t even have to think about it. He completely rejected whatever Apollyon was trying to do. Kin or not did not matter; Apollyon would eat his own children for his power and that was anathema to Serenity. He’d given the other man a chance, only to have it thrown back in his face in an attempt to use him as “protection” from the Voice and the Order. Serenity wasn’t certain he believed in the Order, but he did believe in the Voice. It had helped him where it could and was clear when it could not; that was all he could - no, would - ask of anyone.

Dark, hot strands of magic connected Serenity and Apollyon. Serenity could feel them attempt to dig into him, attempt to change him, to make him what Apollyon wanted him to be. Serenity could also feel them wither as he reacted; the Night Fire was clearly not a magic that handled being exposed very well.

Serenity called on the Death within himself and triggered the complex set of runes he’d etched into his bones with Quickrune. Anything can die. That was what he’d once named the runic inscription and the name was still accurate. Death swept out from him. The first thing to go was the Night Fire; as something that was only half-real, even in its caster’s mind, it faded quickly even though it wasn’t his real target.

Apollyon lasted longer. He was fairly close in Tier to Serenity, after all; that meant it took time. This was one of the largest downsides of Death magic and why some people considered it weak; in a one-on-one battle, it might well bypass nearly any shield (and it did bypass Apollyon’s), but it couldn’t simply cause a fatal injury; it had to actually kill enough and that took time. The stronger the target was, the longer it took. Killing someone at a higher Tier was therefore “impossible” … at least, unless you knew what you were doing.

What people often ignored was that trying to fight while inside a dying body wasn’t like working around a simple injury. Things didn’t work right. Done properly, you had all the time you needed to let death happen.

Serenity felt it when Apollyon stopped fighting and abandoned his body. He was certain that was a trick Apollyon had used on others; a diehar was not just a body. He could find another. Serenity wasn’t about to allow that, but his first Quickrune was nearly spent. He triggered another and pushed with his aura, covering more of the space around him than was comfortable. He had to kill Apollyon here or he’d be fighting him forever.

Or at least until he managed to hunt him down. That was a horrifying thought; Apollyon was a diehar and that meant he could easily disappear into a population. Hunting him down wouldn’t be easy; Serenity would have to turn to other people to do it. Other than Blaze, Serenity knew that most of his people were vulnerable to diehar possession.

Worse, Apollyon would be forewarned and he was clearly clever enough to try to use politics against Serenity. That was a battlefield Serenity knew he was poorly suited to. He’d lose or at least it would cost far more to win than he wanted. Serenity couldn’t afford that.

Apollyon had to die here.

The second rune burned; he hadn’t spaced them quite far enough apart to activate two at a time, but this was still the best solution to a diehar. It wasn’t really good, but he was now certain that his guess was correct: Apollyon was indeed diehar. He didn’t know how the man had managed it and he didn’t care.

It did explain why his Night Fire didn’t always show a demonic tinge; Apollyon himself was not a demon or a demon lord, he merely possessed one. That was close enough for more purposes but not quite the same thing.

Serenity made certain that the first part of the diehar to die was Apollyon’s ability to move. In a way, it was cruel, but it was the only way to be safe. The next part could be its awareness; there was no reason to let it suffer.

“This is not how I wanted it to go,” Serenity told the dying entity that could no longer hear him. “I tried to give you a choice. I really did. I don’t know how we could have worked it out, but if you’d been willing to try, I’d have met you where I could.”

He wasn’t the Final Reaper, yet sometimes he remembered all too well how he’d gotten there. This would have been far easier if he’d attacked when he first saw Apollyon; one Quickrune would probably have been enough.

It was worth the pain to know that, in fact, he hadn’t had a choice. Apollyon did indeed have to die.