The week is finally over and my god was it annoying. Everything that could've gone wrong, seemed to have gone wrong this past week.

Anyway, updates will become (hopefully) more frequent from now one.

By the way, I intended to make the chapter split into two POV’s as I’ve been doing recently ,but it seemed to somehow turn out as an Emily-only chapter.

Chapter 16 will be Acedia, because I will try to divide their ‘screentime’ evenly (no promises though).

Enjoy!

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Emily POV:

As I flew across the room and into the hall, I felt the Energy quickly return to me.

By instinct, I gathered it and right before I hit the wall, conjured something to cushion my collision.

Although it worked as intended, as soon as I hit the wall I felt a stinging pain from my broken ribs and coughed up some blood as I slowly slid down the wall and unto the ground.

Before I could even inspect the damage, I felt that all my bones were set once more and saw that the holes in my soul had already closed itself by using the re-found Energy.

Despite this, I shivered uncontrollably, sweat pouring out of every pore and my skin paling to an abnormal degree, not so much out of pain, but out of fear.

What the hell was that?

For a moment, right before he shot me with those god-awful spears he simply cut me off from the world.

The presence of Energy that has always been so clear and omnipresent and easy to control was suddenly, without even the slightest movement on his part, gone and my barrier, of which I’m very proud, simply scattered into oblivion.

And then the spears!

They were more painful than anything I’d experienced, even more painful than the arrows I designed to exact my revenge!

Thank God he pulled them out before blasting me out of the room, making the pain only last for less than a second.

But still….

Not once had I thought I was underestimating him, or else I wouldn’t have been willing to sacrifice so many of my Gold-masks to attack him.

When I lured him into the palace, I planned to occupy him and allow him to focus on me, defend against his attacks while my creations would try to penetrate his defences.

Even when he went mad and started to slaughter everyone around me with his insane power, did I think the situation was hopeless.

If it come to it, I was confident I could wrestle the Energy out of his crazed control.

But now, defeating him seems like nothing but a pipedream.

Before, he was frantically throwing around his weight while he himself was hurting the most.

In his eyes, I could clearly see the pain, the horror and the immense sadness hidden within, explaining why he went out of control.

Yet just now, when he simply threw me out of the room, I could see nothing.

As soon as I entered, his eyes were hollow, his gaze indifferent and his posture filled with apathy as he lay still on the bed, seemingly sleeping with his eyes open.

Even as I entered and he told me to leave, he was seemingly emotionless.

He wasn’t angry about what I did to him, he wasn’t sad about the betrayal I orchestrated and he wasn’t annoyed that I disturbed him.

His eyes were simply lifeless, clear with apathy and looking through me as if I was nothing but air.

Even the dead seem more alive compared to him.

When I entered and saw him like that, an inexplicable fear came over me, but I strengthened my resolve and approached him.

When I wanted to question him and he interrupted me, there was still no change to his demeanour and I simply pressed onward.

And then, when I tried to insist on him, he simply waved my away like air, his eyes still unchanging.

I wasn’t even an annoyance to him, not even the distaste one could have when squashing a bug was present on him.

It was as if I was a could gust of wind, and he simply closed the door to stop it.

What a frightening man….

[Mother, we are ready.]

Anna said through her Soullink, the first thing I taught the both of them.

Her voice shook me awake from my stupor and I remembered what I needed to do.

I stood up, steadied my shaking, wiped the sweat of my brow and cleansed my bloody clothes.

Unfortunately, I could do nothing about the paleness of my face, but this’ll have to do.

Following the Soullink, I established a bridge connected by a portal and stepped through it.

I arrived at the northwestern one of the eight gates surrounding the city, and saw the remainder of my Gold-masks lining up at the sides of the road, like royal guards during the homecoming of the king.

To my right stood Anna, small and angelic as always and filled with determination, making it clear she was very anxious about the visitor.

To my left stood Damien, slightly bigger as Anna with demonic horns sprouting from his forehead like the tusks of a boar, although his were completely black.

Compared to Anna, he stood solid but not as intense as Anna, seemingly expecting little trouble.

I gathered some Energy, grabbed the gate doors and slowly pulled them open.

What entered my vision was a small envoy dressed in a strange military uniform.

Comparing the armour to everything I had witnessed so far, it looked unlike I’ve ever seen.

The overall style of it reminded me of industrial-age high-ranking military uniforms, but the actual composition of it was vastly different.

It seemed to be made out of an incredibly strong and Energy-infused steel, it looked reminiscent of feudal-era knights and their heavy plate armour, though one of the envoys was without helmet.

Combining these two completely different uniforms they formed something that could only be described as a futuristic knight.

The man without the helmet, seemingly the most important one out of the group, had a face that looked like a bald muscle head with a white-gold earring in his left ear.  

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They took their time walking over here, curiously inspecting the Gold-masks standing to either side of the road and sometimes turning towards each other to exchange their impressions of this place.

As he stood in front of me, he looked at my horns and tail, then locking his gaze onto my eyes.

For but a single moment, I could see astonishment, fear, anger and hate flashing through his mind, but, skilled as he was, he composed himself incredibly fast.

I looked at him, feigning disinterest, and silently urged him to begin.

He scraped his throat and with a strange smile filled with self-satisfaction, began reciting what he came here for.

“Rejoice, Demon! The Apostles of God, the Eight Holy Princeps and saviours of all of Existence, have, in Their glorious quest to unify all of existence under God, decided that this planet is to be civilized and placed under Their holy guidance for all eternity! Submit and be enlightened, Demon, and join their struggle to save all of existence itself!”

His voice filled with zeal and his arms waving around, seemingly praising the sky, was sent here to colonize by a couple of annoying despots, is what I got from this speech.

Although I was interested in where they came from and how they could travel from, I suspect, lightyears away, I was definitely not keen on accepting their offer.

Who would possible want to willingly submit to a couple of mortal men who thought much too highly of themselves?

“I don’t care what you do with the planet, but I’m not interested.”

Seeing him smile, it was clearly evident he never expected me to accept.

He grinned for a second before continuing his tiresome theatrics.

“Oh, woe is me! This foul Demon does not understand your infinite kindness, Lord! But, allow your humble servant to enlighten those foolish enough to not know all Your greatness!”

Another envoy behind him uttered something while the preacher himself still praised the sky, waiting for something to happen with an expectant grin.

A couple seconds passed as my patience was being tested, but just when I had about enough of this farce, I felt something coming from high, high up in the sky.

I looked up and saw a small twinkle like a star becoming bigger and bigger.

I decided to tap into the world’s Energy and created a network towards the strange star visible in broad daylight.

It crawled upwards into the sky and the beam of light it actually was became closer and closer, until it was entirely enveloped into my web.

As soon as my Energy touched the ray of light, I almost went into a stupor.

Turning around, I quickly retracted my net and, instead of one crawling endlessly into the sky placed one over the entire city.

After the first one was done, I added another, and another, and another and repeated this process hundred, if not thousands, of times in the fraction of a second I had left.

Before the beam would reach, I solidified the Energy and created the thickest, strongest barrier I had ever made over the entire city.

I didn’t know where the beam would rain down one, but I suspected the palace located kilometres away from me.

This was bad.

Very, very bad.

The thing I wasn’t worried about was the beam, although its power was beyond everything I had ever seen, but I was worried about the palace.

Or rather, what’s inside it.

If he gets taken by surprise and hit by the immensely powerful deathray, I fear what would happen.

Perhaps he would lose control of himself, potentially destroying the entire city, if not the world!

But this is not what I fear most.

If he manages to remain in control and gets annoyed while still in that terrifyingly cold state, a billion worlds is not enough space to keep me safe.

“Foolish witch! You think this… unholy construct is enough to stop the cleansing radiance of the Lord! You are sorely mistaken, you vermin!”

The bald muscle head man spat.  

God, is he annoying!

Unfortunately I had something more important to do than shut him up.

The previously small-star like thing in the sky had grown big and red.

I know it was still hundreds thousands of kilometres away, since it travelled as fast as light itself, but that made it all the more terrifying.

The world around us had seemingly turned crimson in awe by the incredibly power itself, even when they were hundreds of thousands of kilometres separated from each other.

It took 2.5 seconds until it reached the target.

Nothing was visible.

The world had turned into a red piece of paper by the enormous amount of light the Energy beam radiated, although not heating up because of it.

It was a strangely precise piece of weaponry for its capability.

Just when I was prepared for the receive the impact, I felt an incredibly unpleasant feeling running through my entire shield.

It was one I knew all too well and was thankful it happened.

The entirety of my barrier scattered, leaving the city and the palace defenceless, but it was not necessary anymore.

At the same time the defences disappeared, the world previously drowned out in the crimson light of the Energy beam was visible once more.

The city and the palace was unharmed as the cloudless sky allowed to sun to radiate its colourless light upon it.

I sighed in relief, but in the back of my mind I was anxious.

“You bitch, what have you done!”

The bald man shouted, unclear about what happened.

I smiled thinking about what would happen to the annoying preacher when he shows up.