The giant foot came down and squashed me. Everything went black. My first thought was, 'Is this death'? Then the foot lifted up and I could see again.

Oh. I was fine. I had the Mark of Cain. I was invincible. That was right. For a brief moment, I had forgotten that. As the foot lifted up further, I looked around. I may have been invincible, but I was jammed into the sand up to my neck.

I had two possible solutions for this, but I picked the harder one. I wanted to test the limits of my super strength. I tried to lift my arms out of the sand. My arms burst out of the sand in a spray of particles. Using my newly freed arms, I lifted myself out of the sand and rolled onto my back.

The foot was coming down again. While I wouldn't be harmed by it, I did find rather uncomfortable and inconvenient. So I teleported away before the foot could crush me again.

I teleported into the sky and came face to face with the owner of the foot. It was truly massive. Leviathan had been huge, but this beast was the size of a mountain. It didn't even make sense how it could move without falling over.

The surface of its body seemed to be made up of different ecosystems. On its right shoulder was a forest and on its left was an oasis. Moss and lichen covered its chest, and a mixture of bark and elephant hide covered its legs. Its arms seemed to be made of rock and stone, and its eyes were gems. One seemed to be made of ruby while the other was emerald.

There were still small patches of the black oily substance from the Abyss, but it seemed to have mostly come off through the shaking of its body as it walked or simply gravity letting it dribble down.

"Who are you?" I asked. "Can you be reasoned with as well?" I was referring to how Leviathan had simply wanted peace and freedom.

"I am Behemoth. If by reasoned with, you mean tricked into docility, then no. Humans have disfigured and destroyed the Earth for far too long. I must restore things to the way they should be," it said, with a deep harmonious voice that hummed with life.

"Balanced and natural, with a touch of the cruelty of survival. Not this opulence and decadence that humans have created for themselves, making the world dangerous and unlivable for other creatures."

It had a point. "What are your pronouns? I keep calling you it in my head and it feels uncomfortable," I said.

"He/she/it/they. It does not matter," he said. I chose 'he' because it was easy to imagine such a powerful and enormous creature as a man. Sue me for my sexism. We can't all be perfect. I have my biases just like anyone else.

"Thanks!" I said. "While I agree that humans have really made the Earth their own, isn't that what God intended? It says in the Bible that he gave man dominion over the earth and all the creatures and plants on it."

Behemoth laughed heartily. It sounded like rocks sliding over each other, but in a pleasant way. "I care not for what the Bible says or what a cruel and unjust God decides. I have but one purpose. To keep the Earth in balance, and balance must be restored."

"I appreciate your perspective, but as my role is to protect the humans, I must stop you," I said. "Which may result in your death. Are you ok with that?"

Behemoth laughed again. This time, it sounded like birds chirping. Really deep voiced birds. "I fail to see how you're going to accomplish that, but if that is what indeed happens, so be it. I made peace with death the moment I was created. It is no burden to me."

"It is a burden to me. Not just my death, but yours as well," I said.

I was feeling rather sentimental, and I didn't know why. Maybe it was the idea of destroying something or someone with such a just purpose, or the fact that I knew somewhere deep down that Behemoth wouldn't have an afterlife. He would simply cease to exist. And that was terrifying.

"Then I hope not to burden you this day," Behemoth said with a sense of finality.

He swung his massive arms together, trying to smash me between his hands. I teleported high above him and concentrated. It was time to get angry.

This time, it wasn't the futility of trying to keep Margaret happy. It was the unjustness of this battle, the fact that Heaven was leaving us to do this on our own, and that this was all somehow my responsibility. I didn't deserve to be burdened with this responsibility. No one did. No one except the person that put all this in motion. God.

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It was God who created Behemoth. Why did He then seal him away in the Abyss? Couldn't He have simply uncreated him? Couldn't He stop all this death and destruction with a snap of his fingers? Why did he insist on delegating tasks to others?

Why did God allow so much suffering? I suppose it was all a test for humans to determine who would reach Heaven and who go to Purgatory or Hell, but surely the Abyss opening and releasing unspeakable horrors wasn't in His plan. Surely He didn't want this. Why then didn't He fix it?

And where were Lucifer and Raphael and the other archangels? Their help would greatly increase our chance of victory. We were outnumbered many times. We needed help. So why did they not help? Where were they?

It was clear that I was alone and I would have to handle this problem myself. And I needed to do it well, or my demon army would be decimated and I would be responsible for their deaths.

"Master! Do you need my assistance?" Fredericka said as she ran towards me on a gray scale rainbow.

"Yes! Fredericka, I need you to get the injured to safety! I've got this guy handled," I said.

"Yes, master! I will do the thing that you said, yes I will! That thing that you said will be done by me!" she said, running away on her rainbow.

I narrowed my eyes in confusion. Did she actually hear what I said or did she just say all that to cover up that she didn't understand what I asked her to do? I shook my head. I didn't have time to worry about that. She would do her best to help and that was all that mattered.

Smack! I felt an impact on my body as Behemoth slapped me out of the air. I created a crater in the earth when I hit the ground. I got back up and teleported back into the air, but higher this time. Hopefully, he wouldn't be able to reach me this time.

What was I doing again? Oh, yeah. I was getting angry. How dare they all put this responsibility squarely on my shoulders. I couldn't stand for it. I wouldn't stand for it. After I was done with this battle, I would give God and Heaven a piece of my mind.

Ahhh!!! Hellfire burst into existence around me. Good. Now I could do what I needed to. I aimed my body down and dove towards Behemoth's head. I put my hands in front of my body and summoned hellfire, shooting two tubular sprays at his head.

His head blackened from the flames, but it didn't catch fire. I circled around his head, firing more hellfire at his face and the back of his head. The skin or whatever it was that made up the surface of his body, blackened, but still didn't catch fire.

"Argh! Stop that! That hurts! Annoying fly!" Behemoth swatted at me, but I teleported out of the way. I kept up the hellfire as I circled around his body. It kept blackening his body, but it didn't seem to be doing the kind of damage necessary to kill him.

Maybe super strength could break his body, but not at my current strength. I needed to get stronger somehow, but I didn't know how. I flew up to his chest and punched him. It didn't even mark the surface, but I kept at it. I punched and punched until I felt his body start to get pushed back by the force of my punches.

It didn't damage the surface, but I was getting stronger. I was able to put him off balance and stagger him back. I kept punching and pushing him back until another jewel lit up on the crown. This one was red. The crown told me this was the sin of might. Imposing one's power and strength on others.

That was exactly what I needed. I punched and punched until I knocked Behemoth over onto his back. The ground shuddered so hard everyone on the battlefield fell over and couldn't get up for a while.

I still couldn't break the surface of his skin, but I could impose my might on him. I was stronger than him. I was in charge. I would win this fight if it took everything I had. I flew up to his face and punched it. Part of his blackened cheek broke away.

Huh. The hellfire must have weakened the integrity of his body. If I combined my new strength with my hellfire, I could break him to pieces. I shot hellfire with my left hand while punching the blackened stone flesh with my right hand. I started to dig a hole into his cheek this way until he dug me out of his flesh with his finger.

He flicked me away. I tumbled through the air until finally flapping my wings hard enough to stabilize my body. I looked down at his body. He had many blackened spots on his body from where I had burned him. I chose the spot over where I assumed his heart might be and started punching and burning my way through his flesh.

I turned left and right as I dug through him to keep him from being able to reach me with his finger. His finger probably wouldn't be able to curve like the hole I was digging. He'd have to break apart more of his flesh to get to me.

I kept going in the dark until I broke through the other side. It wasn't until I started hitting sand that I realized I had broken all the way through him. He sat up. He was still moving. My theory about him having vital organs like a heart was wrong.

I would have to change tactics. I teleported high into the sky again and dove toward his right hand. I shot hellfire out with both hands and barreled into his fingers, smashing and destroying them. Then I did the same to the other hand. After removing his fingers, I went to work on his wrists, smashing and destroying them piece by piece until his hands fell off his body.

After that, I went to work on his elbow joints and then his shoulders until his arms were completely gone. After that, all I had to do was remove his head, and he had no appendages with which to stop me. It seemed to take forever, but eventually I toppled his head off his shoulders and I pushed his massive body backwards so he didn't fall on my troops.

"You'll never defeat Ziz. She is the strongest of us. You'll never match her speed or power in the sky," Behemoth's head said.

"We'll see about that," I said, as I punched out his teeth and broke apart his stone mouth until he couldn't speak anymore. I didn't need his voice distracting me from my mission.

If I had to destroy his head to kill him, I wouldn't go to the effort of doing it, but at least destroying his mouth allowed me to shut him up. I began to hate the way he talked, like my defeat was inevitable. It wasn't. I was going to win, and he would live to see it.