Chaos side

I push myself off the ground and look down at my hands in surprise. Willing a flame to appear doesn't work, and neither does floating. But I'm still in my human appearance, so I haven't lost all my abilities. Looking ahead, I find the boy Alverost sitting on the ground, screaming and holding his cauterized stump of a wrist.

A beautiful woman in golden armor kneels on the ground with labored breathing and unable to move. With one look, I can tell that this is Aurelia, who has somehow lost her powers. Tokomaha is standing a distance away as if bolted to the ground. Judging by the fact that the human party complete with Svanhild and Halthor is surrounding Alverost, it's safe to say that he's responsible for de-powering people in the area.

"Don't kill him yet." I walk over to Aurelia and see if she's alright.

"Why? He's responsible for all this!" Rolan raises his voice while using his new left arm to gesture at our surroundings. The plaza is filled with dead bodies from demons and devils alike.

"I said yet." Giving the former leader a displeased look, I kneel beside the golden girl who seems to have difficulties breathing. "Hard, isn't it? When you don't need to breathe for centuries, and it all comes back to you."

"Mind... your own... business." Weakly smacking my extended hand away, Aurelia musters the strength to reply. If she can do that, she's alright. "That... armband."

I follow where she points and find Alverost's severed hand on the ground a short distance from him. There's a large watch still attached to the wrist, and I understand that this must be what's inhibiting the Imagination Engine in this area. It explains why the humans were able to overpower an Old Human while Aurelia and Tokomaha couldn't participate.

"Somebody shut him up." I gesture at the still screaming boy. It must hurt to lose a limb, but that's nothing compared to the suffering he has caused, so I have not a shred of sympathy for him. But the humans around him seem to pity the childlike Old Human. It doesn't seem like he has anything more he can do at this point, so he really is nothing but a little boy barely in his teens. They don't move and only stare at him with complicated expressions.

Walking over to the severed hand and picking it up, I pull his wrist out of the watch and toss it aside before looking at the device. It appears simple enough, with a touchscreen in the center that shows the word 'on' in green. When I bring my finger to it, nothing happens.

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"Nobody... but me... can use that!" Alverost finally stops screaming to glare at me while breathlessly yelling in my direction triumphantly. It must give him a sense of a silver lining to know that nobody but he can operate his technology.

"Is that so." I turn my hand into a tentacle and snatch up Alverost's severed hand that I carelessly dropped just now. But instead of using his finger to operate it as he expected I would do, I toss the piece of the Old Human into my mouth. It causes the humans to look at me in shock, but I ignore their gazes.

In the next moment, I transform into another Alverost. Everybody is stunned, but the one most surprised is the person himself. Then he raises his voice once again, sounding less convinced than before but still spiteful.

"Transforming into me isn't enough!" He laughs, and I wonder where he's getting the idea from that this device is the only thing keeping us from killing him. It's nothing more than an interesting gimmick that I think could come in handy to blindside Shelnir or even Chaos-Juzual and Mataku.

I touch the screen with a finger, upon which the word on it changes to display a request for confirmation by moving a virtual knob across a star-shaped pattern. Apparently, Alverost built in a failsafe so that it wouldn't release the inhibition field on accident.

"How long does the battery last on this?" I walk over to Alverost, who stares at me blankly while holding his stump of a hand. "Tell me or lose your other hand."

To demonstrate how serious my threat is, I grow a tentacle from my back and turn it into a giant pair of scissors. Snipping once in front of the boy's face, I drive home that the next time he hears this sound, it will have severed his remaining wrist. His eyes widen in realization, but then he smiles nervously.

"Y-you have nothing... nothing to threaten me with." He stutters, trying to act fearless. At least he understands that his end is coming soon, regardless of whether or not he answers my question. That's why being defiant and denying me the use of his device is his final act of resistance.

"Oh, well." I shrug and draw the pattern on the screen to unlock the Imagination Engine in the area. That's when Alverost's eyes widen in surprise before he laughs almost maniacally.

"You idiot! You just gave me a way out!" He raises his hand as if grasping something in the air. But when nothing happens, he blinks once before realizing that he was tricked.

"Is that so." I show him the screen, which still displays the big green 'on' sign. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, and this self-proclaimed genius fell for it. "Do tell what your way out would have been."

"That would be me." A familiar voice suddenly speaks above me, and I look up to find a figure faintly glowing from the inside floating in the air. Pearl-white skin, a radiant halo behind her back, and a cleavage that is truly the bounty of Mother Sun.

Areteniha has arrived, and her gaze is anything but motherly upon seeing the state her son is in.