No-one tried to stop him. Not with a Devil by his side. Be they citizen or Sulfur Blood, student or staff, they just stood by and watched as Cobalt approached the school gates. All his life, he had contended with them staring at him like some kind of oddity, or gazing with eyes of admiration, or looks of pity. Now, though? He was surrounded by eyes filled with fear. No longer a man in their eyes, he wagered. The sheepskin was slipping off, exposing the beast inside. The broken, bloodied beast.

The men guarding the gate let him pass without incident. What were they to do? Gun him and his Devilish companion down? What good would that do?

Beyond the school's walls lay a maze of abandoned vehicles. They stretched from beyond the designated carpark to the street, surrounding B.I.D. with enough empty cars to slow the Devils down, should they consider mounting an attack. Behind him, dozens of mirrors had been mounted to the walls themselves, each bearing tiny inscriptions promising to repel attack. Sure enough, the moment they stepped in range, Lilith began to wince and clutch her head as an acute pain made itself known in Cobalt's horns.

"F- Fuck... He wasn't kidding about the wards..." Lilith murmured as her Incubus friend picked his way between the vehicles.

He didn't have anything to offer in reply. Cobalt didn't have anything to offer at all, not anymore. Only his body, and he ticking timebomb it had become. The Sulfur Blood guards watched from the wall as he slowly made his way down the road, only to stop upon hearing rapid footfalls behind him.

"Wait!" cried a voice, echoing out through the abandoned street.

Stopping in place, Cobalt looked over his shoulder. There, leaning against an SUV as he struggled to catch his breath, was Arnn Srenth of all people. The past few days hadn't been kind to the Imp if his broken glasses and bruised eye were anything to go on, but apparently that didn't stop him from slipping through the gates after his old teacher.

"You shouldn't be out here, Arnn. It's not safe," the Incubus told him.

Nervously eyeing up the Devil in his midst, he turned his bruised gaze onto Cobalt.

"You can't go out there, man, please!"

Cobalt frowned. In all honesty, it was surprising to hear that even one of his students still had his back. Alas...

"... Go back inside, Arnn. Don't worry your father."

"And what about your dad, huh?! Didn't you just get the guy back?! You really gonna get yourself killed just because-?!"

Lilith spat on the ground.

"He told you to fuck off, runt. Don't make me say it too," the Devil hissed, narrowing her eye at him.

Arnn whimpered and stumbled back, but still held his ground.

"C- Cobalt, c'mon, don't do this. You got friends here," he reasoned.

The Incubus shook his head and turned away.

"Not anymore, I'm afraid."

"I'm standing right here!"

That gave him pause. For a moment, all that was heard was the mounting hubbub from within the school's walls and the howling of the hot summer wind as Cobalt mulled over the words of his former student. He sighed and rubbed his face, bony spurs scratching at his skin.

"... It was an honour to teach you, Arnn," he finally said, continuing on his way with Lilith in tow.

And with that, Cobalt turned his back on the Brimstone Institute of Demonics for the last time, and began to walk the long road to the dark fortress looming over the Brimstone skyline.

It was eerie just how quiet the town was now. The buildings lining the side of the road were empty and desolate, their darkened windows following Cobalt as he passed like dead, accusatory eyes. In the wake of the Tempered Bastion's eruption from the ground, dust and detritus had been scattered everywhere, and the mounting winds ensured that every inch of the town was covered in a layer of the stuff. He had heard reports of what the first day of the invasion was like; Devils swooping down upon the panicking citizens bearings spears and axes, some snatching people back to the Bastion, others just killing them outright. Cobalt passed by dried bloodstains that had seeped into the ground and walls around him, lending credence to those dark stories. He felt horrified, of course, but nothing seemed to overpower the paradoxical hot and cold burn in his chest.

"I don't think I ever properly thanked you, you know," Lilith said, her boots leaving little disturbance in the dust as they walked through the town's outer district.

The Incubus glanced up at her face. Not a single hint of facetiousness to be seen.

"For what?" he asked in reply.

Lilith just shrugged.

"For being there, I guess? I know you didn't have a choice, but..."

The Devil sighed.

"Well. We've come a long way, haven't we?"

"That we have."

"... I knew it was always going to end like this. Maybe not exactly like this, but close enough. I imagined I'd be possessing your body and taking the fight to them, but..."

She glanced over at Cobalt. Her ruby eye glinted in the strained sunlight.

"It's nice to not be alone in this fight," she finally concluded, putting a hand on Cobalt's shoulder.

He stayed silent for a while as they passed by an abandoned corner store. The windows had all been smashed in, and the shelves picked completely clean. It seems the Devils had stripped nearly the entirety of the town for anything of use, be that food, water, or anything else remotely of use. B.I.D.'s stores were already running low; they wouldn't last much longer on what they had.

"I never told you, did I? Who I really was," Lilith said, kicking a chunk of broken concrete as she walked.

"I saw enough. When Immoderata... you know..."

"Enough, maybe. But not everything."

That was one of his grievances at one point, wasn't it? That Lilith played her cards too close to her chest. The funny thing was, even though Cobalt's secrets had all been thoroughly flensed and left exposed for her to see, he no longer cared about anything the Devil saw fit to keep from him. Whether it was the trust the two had finally built up against all odds, or something else entirely, the Incubus reasoned that if she were still hiding something from him, then she had a damn good reason for doing so.

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

Looking around at the desolate outskirts of the town she had come to know so well over the past year, Lilith took a deep breath.

"Did you know I used to be a princess?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I sort of got that impression, yes."

She smiled, even despite it all.

"Lady Zelde of Pandemonium. I studied damn near everything I could, but architecture was my specialty. Helped design nearly everything in the city, especially anything related to its defence," she mused, staring up at the clouds.

But as quickly as it appeared, her smile faded.

"Maybe if I had worked on them a little harder, Pandemonium never would have..."

"Lilith..." Cobalt breathed.

Shaking her head, she quickened her pace a little, forcing the Incubus to follow suit.

"Once the Rapture began, we were forced to form ranks, and the Alpha Corps were created, each designated to lead a regiment of specialists. On the day we got our brands, we likewise gave up our names," the Devil continued, holding a hand to her chest.

There was a strain to her voice, like this was something she had been holding in for a long time.

"We never got them back, even after we fled to Damnation. Over a thousand years, bearing the title of Omega. Over a thousand years, living as a destroyer when I was born to create. And when I found out that there were plans to begin another campaign of destruction with this fucking eye at the centre of it all...!"

Lilith stopped in the middle of the street, holding a hand to her eyepatch. The other one was balled into a fist, and her jaw was set firm with determination.

"... So I took up a new name. In memory of my mother."

Cobalt felt a lump form in his throat. He remembered scraps of the visions forced upon him by their link; watching a noble Devil queen drown beneath an Incubus tide, all for her people.

"... I'm sure she'd be proud of you," he told her as reassuringly as he could.

"I don't know about that. But she always stood to defend her own. Even from themselves. That's what the name means. That's what it's always meant. And I don't care how many Devils need to bleed before they realise they're only damning themselves."

Balling her fists, Lilith stared at them for a moment before facing her companion.

"You've got people proud of you too, you know."

"I don't know if-"

"Wasn't a question, Cobalt. It's just fact."

Taking her place by his side, she slapped the Incubus' back.

"Look at us. Devil and Incubus, working together as a team, 'til death do us part. Win or lose, it'll make one Hell of a story," Lilith told him, cracking her knuckles.

With a deep, unimaginably heavy breath, Cobalt nodded.

"That it will..."

Onwards they pushed, until they arrived in Brimstone proper. The destruction was impossible to ignore here. Cars had been flipped onto their sides, their doors ripped off and windows smashed by the invading Devils. Cracks riddled the road underfoot from the quakes that heralded the Tempered Bastion's emergence, and fires burned within the homes of the town's cowering denizens, set alight either from ruptured gas lines or Devilish malice. As Cobalt walked down the broken road, he looked up to see Devils high above him, swooping around the looming form of the fortress.

"How do you want to play it if we get spotted? Together or separate?" Lilith asked as she eyed up her ex-comrades far above.

"Whichever suits you best. This... isn't my forte," Cobalt replied despondently.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before they ran into trouble. Rounding a street corner on the way to the town's centre, they encountered a trio of Devils, standing amidst a dust-strewn zebra crossing. They were dressed in soldier's uniforms much like the members of the Alpha Corps he had met before; dark fatuiges beneath steel scale and plating, though the condition of the metal and the haphazard repairs made to it with bands of iron and strips of cloth informed him that things had been desperate in Damnation for a long time. The three clutched fearsome glaives in their hands, and were all staring at the traffic lights as they idly blinked for cars that no longer ran.

"What's it for?" Cobalt heard one of the Devils murmur.

"Dunno. Alarms, maybe? Lights up in case of attack?"

"Didn't do these ones much good, then."

His attention was drawn over to the wreckage of a van. The Incubus blanched at the sight of several demon bodies, all lined up on the footpath. They had been mercilessly cut down by the Devils, their blood long-since dried into the concrete.

"Bastards..." he heard Lilith murmur as she took a step forward.

Summoning an iron pistol into her hand, she raised it high and fired it into the air, drawing the attention of the three Devils. Immediately, they formed a disciplined phalanx, only to be taken aback by the Devil standing against them.

"O- Omega? Is that you?" one of them cried in a shocked tone.

She aimed her pistol at him.

"I'm gonna tell you this once, and once only. Step aside, let me past, and you'll keep breathing."

The Devil soldier shook his head.

"No can do, my lady. Orders right from the top. We're to take you in," he barked.

Lilith scoffed.

"I'd like to see you try...!"

A second gunshot rang out through the eerily still Brimstone air, this one much louder than the report of Lilith's pistol. The Devil that had denied Lilith her demands was thrown back as the back of his head exploded outwards, spraying the cracked road with gore and fragments of reddened bone. Eyes wide, Cobalt whipped around to face where the gunshot had echoed from. There, hunched atop a building at the other end of the street, was Gail. She leveled a battered old hunting rifle at the Devils, its lack of a scope doing nothing to detract from her impeccable aim. More gunshots rang out from before him, startling Cobalt as Lilith dove into the fray, ducking beneath the Devil's charge as she took them head-on.

He could do nothing but stand and watch as one of his closest friends did battle with the people she once swore to protect. From on-high, Gail provided fire support, keeping them penned in as Lilith expertly knocked their weapons from their hands, bowled them to their knees, and finally executed them both with two rounds to the heart, and a single bullet to the head.

The look on her face... Not the bloodlust of a seasoned fighter, nor the cold focus of a soldier. She looked sad.

When the gunsmoke had cleared and the bodies had struck the floor, Lilith turned and aimed her weapons down a side alley as she was alerted to the sound of footsteps.

"Wait! Don't shoot, Liliy! 'S just me!" rang the harsh tones of Dallas' voice.

The rogue Devil skidded to a halt amidst the bloodbath, clutching an iron axe in one hand and a rusty double-barreled shotgun in the other. Scowling, he prodded one of the dead Devils with his boot.

"Shit. Missed all the fun. Ah'm losin' mah touch," he sighed, dispelling his weapon as he rested his gun against his shoulder.

"Quit fucking around, Dallas. This is it. We're making our charge," Lilith chided, lightly smacking the back of his head.

His eyes widened.

"Seriously?"

"Don't really have any other choice. Cobalt and I... we're..."

The skirmisher swallowed hard and nodded, all levity gone from his face. Looking up, he gave Gail a hand signal.

"... Got it. We've been tryna keep 'em busy an' away from the school, but sweet hellfire, Alpha's gone an' dragged everyone up here. Only so much we can do."

"Have you gotten a look at their defences?"

"Yeah. Nothin' special, but they got the front door guarded at all hours. An' ya didn't give it backdoors, did ya?"

Lilith sighed and folded her arms.

"Aside from the emergency augers, no. And I can't imagine they'd leave those open. Shit..."

As the Devils discussed strategy, the Incubus tentatively approached the bodies left in the wake of the fight. Numerous demons - hapless Brimstone citizens - brutally cut down in the street. Beside them, the fresh corpses of Lilith's old comrades, Devils for whom death was the ultimate end, without any promise of a great beyond. Fresh blood flowed over the dried, filling his nostrils with an intense, irresistible scent. So many lives gone in a second, rendered down to meat piled before him.

He could feel his mouth watering, and he hated it.

"We have to go," the Incubus said urgently, tearing his eyes away from the bodies.

Gail had joined the group, and all three Devils stared at him.

"We don't have a plan, Cobalt," Lilith told him.

He swallowed hard. Just below the surface of his skin, the could feel the madness in his veins, tearing at him to get out. Roiling flesh, boiling blood, sharpened bone... Any longer, and he'd lose control of himself.

"Don't need one. Let's just... Let's just go before it's too late," the Incubus breathed, marching on down the street.

"Cobalt, wait...!"

Gail tugged Lilith's arm.

"... They'll have heard the gunshots..."

"Ah Hell, Gigi's right. Look, we'll split off an' cause a distraction. Blow somethin' up, draw 'em away from the Bastion. Hopefully that'll give ya some breathin' room."

"... Right. I'm counting on you two."

They both gave her a brief salute before rushing off back down the alley. With her teeth gritted, Lilith could only mutter obscenities before rushing after Cobalt, who forged on towards the ruined heart of Brimstone, his jaw set firm and his eyes set on the Tempered Bastion, ever-looming before him.