Satan, June 4th

Bzzt! Bzzt!’ The phone rang for the millionth time. Satan groaned as he rose out of his bed. He frowned upon realizing he was in his apartment bedroom, not his old room at the palace.

“Bzzt! Bzzt!” The phone rang yet again. Satan reached for his phone, eyelids blinking, and staying closed for a minute. He answered.

“Holy shit finally. Do you know what’s going on?” Zeta’s voice panted, with loud unidentifiable noises in the background.

“No, what is it?” Satan yawned as he got out of bed.

“Pink is under attack. Are you gonna come help or-?”

“What? Why didn’t you start with that?” Satan yelled as he lept out of bed and manuevered the blood in the jar over to him to turn into his pitchfork. He snatched his walkie-talkie off his dresser

“I don’t know, just get over here!” Zeta said, before yelling and being cut off.

Satan arrived to Pink on one of the high ends of the valley. Below he saw the palace in shambles, fire swallowing up almost everything in it’s path. Satan quickly teleported in closer. Now he was on the long brick path to the palace.

“What’s the plan?” Satan asked into his walkie-talkie.

“Try to get into the palace, stop the fire, avoid Takahiro’s crew trying to kill you. They’ve already done a good job at keeping us out. They’ve locked the doors and placed some kind of seal, the ones with magic can’t teleport in anywhere.” Zeta said.

“Geez, got it.” Satan remarked. He turned his scythe back into blood to throw away some of Takahiro’s soldiers, then turned it back again. He teleported into a forest behind the palace and ducked underneath a bush. He peeked over the bush slightly, and saw nobody else at the back of the palace with him.

‘Well, couldn’t hurt to try, I suppose.’ Satan thought. He transformed his scythe into blood and attempted to teleport inside.

When the blood cleared he was in a small and dark room, with light gleaming in from behind. Satan hesistantly reached out an arm. Nothing. Then he stepped forward. Still nothing. To his left, he saw something, like a transparent bubble, but huge and unpoppable. Satan touched it, and felt an uncomfortable, tingling sensation. He immediately retracted his hand.

‘Holy shit… Well, I figured it out, at least.’ Satan jumped back. He pulled out his walkie-talkie again. “Hey guys, the back has some open area, it looks like… some empty room on the first floor, if that narrows it down. If you see something that looks like a bubble, don’t touch it, it shocks you.”

“Makes sense.” Zeta said.

Satan put his walkie-talkie away and began walking forwards more. He pushed the door open, cringing at the creaks of the door. He looked both ways, only advancing forward when he was sure it was empty. He speed walked across the hallway to another wall, and peeked over yet again.

Again and again, he snuck around, pressing himself against walls and getting lost in hallways and random rooms for twenty minutes. Eventually, he spotted familiar curly black hair and glasses. Satan pressed himself back again the wall and transformed his chains to blood, swirling the blood around himself as quietly as he could manage. Takahiro turned him his direction as he began teleporting away. While in the middle of the air, Satan felt his surroundings bloodied by the blood be darkened. He felt his body moving in a different direction then intended.

After the darkness cleared he was in the back of the palace again, sprawled out on the grass.

“Don’t go back in there, they’re guarding the back of the palace while they patch that open spot.” Satan heard Zeta’s voice over the walkie-talkie.

“Shit, Takahiro saw me, I wasn’t careful enough…” Satan mumbled into the walkie-talkie. “Now what?”

“What are the chances we could get your sister-in-law to help, the one with the destruction powers. I forget what her name is…” Zeta said.

“That’s Arista. It’s so early in the morning, she’s on Earth, and she has an infant son now.”

“Oh… Alright.” Zeta sighed.

“Are we giving up on the palace then?” Satan said as he slowly stood up and readied his blood pitchfork.

“I guess so. Can you go help put out the fires?”

“Of course.” Satan prepared to teleport once again. He floated in the air inside the blood until he spotted a part of the city on fire. He landed and formed some of his blood supply into a bucket, rushing to a nearby stream of water and throwing it at the burning buildings. Despite that, the fire began to swallow more and more surrounding buildings. Satan even used the rest of his blood supply to make a bigger bucket, but it was still no use.

“Attention, we’re evacuating as many people as possible. Get to the ports and help out as many as you can.” Zeta’s voice yelled over the walkie-talkie.

‘Are you kidding me? Again?’ Satan thought as he yelled out to the frightened citizens of Pink. Some used their love magic to teleport, while others, probably humans, all raced down the streets of the town. Satan began to run with them, stopping to help others on the way.

After twenty minutes, he arrived at the port, seeing Venus and the rest of her family being ushered onto one of the boats.

“Venus! Are you alright?” Satan raced up to her.

Venus turned to face him. Her makeup was smudged and her eyes were red and puffy. “Not really.”

“Why are you evacuating by boat? Can’t you use your love magic?”

“Takahiro did something to all our magic,” Venus motioned to her other family members. “We’re not really sure what but we can’t get it to work. He also got some of the other citizens with magic. I guess in the panic of it all, a lot of the love magic users fled and left the ones that are powerless behind.”

“Of course he did. Do you need help or…?”

“I’ll be alright. You did your best.” Venus leaned in closer to start whispering, “We’ll be in Cyan if you need us.”

“Alright, I’m sorry.” Satan sighed. He began teleporting away, this time back to his palace.

***

Satan, June 9th

In Satan’s apartment bedroom, he had a large map of Ayuzuma, with the Heaven and Hell Sector maps on either side of it. After the events from Thursday, he had to update it again, but he held off from updating it immediately. Today, he finally would be updating it, as much as he wished he couldn’t.

He stared at the bottom left corner, where the long main island of Pink was, with a few small islands at the southern end. Like a corkboard with red strings, he tacked on four thumbtacks surrounding Pink and surrounded them each in red strings to create an x.

His eyes fell on the surrounding kingdoms. Under Pink was Grey, the twelve tiny islands surrounding the one main island. He shivered at the thought of how recent the takeover of Grey way.

To the right of Grey was Rainbow, with thicker land on the left becoming thinner on the right and many islands on the right. Still untouched, thank Ayuma.

Above, was the Blue Kingdom. Not land, but all the sea and waters on the western portion of Ayuzuma.

Right of Blue was Light Blue, taking up the other half of sea not claimed by Blue.

Above Blue was the continent Cyan and Purple shared. Cyan was a smaller kingdom with ports on the sea. Purple had the rest of the bulk of the continent to it’s name. Purple even had some snowy regions up north. Both still free from Takahiro’s grasp.

Right was Black. Compared to the other kingdoms in the western portion of Ayuzuma, Black seemed much smaller. Satan scoffed at the sight, thoughts of Takahiro truly overwhelming his brain by then. Black had been crossed out with the red string. His eyes lingered on the staircase to Hell on the peninsula that brought Black closer to Green.

‘I should really make a staircase to hell somewhere else. Hell, maybe even one in all kingdoms. I don’t think that’s happening with this war anytime soon though.’

Below Black and above Rainbow was Green, also crossed out like many others.

Next to Green was Yellow, one of the largest kingdoms of Ayuzuma. Largest by land size, anyway. Yet it still was taken and now crossed out on the map.

Northwestern from Yellow was Orange, with each of it’s individual clans laid out.

Right of Orange was all the kingdoms on the continent of Tempest. Starting from the southern end, there was Brown, Fuschia, Lime, and Light Grey on the mainland. On a group of islands was White. All of Tempest was crossed out as well, going with the rest of the taken kingdoms.

‘Hm… Now they have Grey, Pink, Black, Green, Yellow, Brown, Fuschia, Lime, and Light Grey. The untouched kingdoms are Cyan, Purple, Rainbow, Orange, Light Blue, Blue, and Red. Yellow is the third largest Ayuzumian kingdom, and the largest in landmass overall. Their military numbers could obviously increase with each new kingdom acquired, when they got Yellow they had Black, Grey, Green, White, Light Grey, Lime and Brown. In landmass I’m guessing that’d be about equal to Yellow so I suppose it could make sense… I’m still worried though. I don’t know if they have mermaids and demons so they can access the sea or either afterlives, but they might have the numbers to invade. God, I can’t believe it’s only been six months of this. This is way different from the war between Demons and Angels.’ Satan stepped back to ponder the events of the war, so invested in his thoughts that he completely blocked out his phone buzzing.

Finally though, one last ring of his phone snapped him out of his thoughts. He finally answered the phone saw The Detective calling. His eyes widened and throat went dry as he picked up the phone.

“I have some… not great updates.” Reyes gulped on the other line.

“Can’t get any worse than it already has, hit me.” Satan groaned.

“Well, I’ve been particularly busy with my royal duties on planet Eris, so I wasn’t able to investigate Takahiro and Katherina. Finally though I was able to, and I accidentally overhead a secret meeting while on my way to get into Takahiro’s office. I peeked in and they were talking to a bunch of gods.”

“I take that back, it is getting worse. Did you take a video or catch any names?”

“Yes, actually. I’ll send the video to you right now. And of the names I caught I heard Xenia, ‘Esato, Snezhana, Ximena… There was definitely more but those were the names I heard thrown around.”

Satan quickly scribbled the four names down on a piece of paper. “I recognize Xenia, but not ‘Esato, Snezhana or Ximena.”

“I mean, Xenia sounds like the name of one of those Greek words of death or something, but-”

Satan froze in place. He clenched his fist, and had to resist the urge to punch the wall. “That’s one of the deities in Pink! Maybe that’s the one that helped Takahiro and Katherina escape!”

“They escaped?”

“Yes, don’t ask, it’s a long story. Is that all you have for today?”

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Yeah, never made it into Takahiro’s office this time…”

“Alright. I hope somehow things are better next time we talk. Bye.”

As he hung up, Satan looked down at his hands as they trembled and his veins flowed with rage. His skin shifted from his usual warm, light brown, to the same light red of his demon tail. A symbol of anger or strong emotion within demons. His eyes happened to fall upon the map yet again, looking at the unconquered kingdoms. Purple. Cyan. Light Blue. Blue. Orange. The Heaven and Hell Sectors of Red. Rainbow. He paused, then immediately went to his phone again.

June 11th

Back again in the meeting room. Kings and Queens, both former and current were around the room, chatting, except for Venus. Satan frowned while he watched her sob to the Queen of Purple and the King of Brown. He noticed how only the remaining royals were still dressed in their crowns and jewels, while the former royals were missing those. They wore more plain t-shirts and pants, plain skirts and shoes. Except for Yami, who could always pass off as a normal citizen of Black. At least, without the tiny kanmuri that usually adorned his hair before Black was taken.

Finally, the other royals made their way over to each of their seats and began to quiet down. Auriana, who was right next to him, motioned to Satan to start. He sighed and rose frm his chair.

“Hello again, royals of Ayuzuma. I don’t need to be the one reminding you that things have been worse since our last meeting, but I do. Since the attack on my family back in January, a detective has been going undercover for me. His name is Reyes Valencia and she’s a demon that works under my father, but that’s besides the point.” Satan paused to turn on a TV in the corner of the room. “In case you don’t know what you’re looking at, Reyes was able to find out that somehow, Katherina and Takahiro have gotten gods on their side. I was also given the names of four gods Reyes overheard, ‘Esato, Ximena, Xenia, and Snezhana.” Satan crossed his arms, frowning as he awaited their reactions.

React they did, as Amber cursed out not only ‘Esato, her home clan’s deity, but also Snezhana, a deity worshipped in both Light Grey and the ice clan. The Queen of Purple screamed at the sight of her goddess, and Venus sobbed even harder at the sight of Xenia, not only a deity from her kingdom, but one of her ancestors. The rest of the royals all reacted poorly, if their deity was spotted, heard, or name was mentioned in the recording, they were screaming or crying.

“Well now what? Some of our deities have betrayed us, what hope is left for the kingdoms that are free?” Venus asked Satan in between her sobs as her cousins all surrounded and comforted her.

“The remaining kingdoms need to band with each other and the resistance. If we focus only on our own kingdoms I wouldn’t doubt that we’ll fall faster, Takahiro has the strength of eleven kingdoms now. Who’s in?”

Of the remaining rulers, only Amber’s hand didn’t shoot up immediately after Satan asked his question. In fact, she didn’t raise her hand at all. Satan looked at her in confusion.

“With Ayuma gone, peace is gone. With how everything’s going so far, I feel like fate is against us and all of Ayuzuma will be in Takahiro’s grubby hands. It doesn’t matter how much of a fight my kingdom can put up at this point, it’s inevitable. I’d like to spend the least moments of peace in my kingdom with my family, my friends, my boyfriends, and enjoy ourselves for a little bit longer.”

“We still have a chance! Just because Ayuma is gone doesn’t mean we can’t win, it just means our win may have to be chaotic. Plus, we got close to capturing Katherina and Takahiro.”

Amber rose from her seat and began grabbing her things. “I’m sorry, but in history, the last time Ayuma left things didn’t turn out so good. Everyone began tearing each other apart. Takahiro has betrayed it’s homeland, and the deity I put all my faith in growing up, after everything I went through, has abandoned her people. Any hope I had is gone. I think I’m done here.”

The reigning royals all lept out of their seat and went over to Amber, trying to convince her.

“We made our choice, let her make hers.” Satan mumbled to them. They sat back down. Amber gave one last glance, before she burst into flames, and teleported away.

“Now what?” Auriana groaned as slumped in her chair.

“Let’s discuss who could be next.” Satan sat back down, and scooted his chair in.

“His patterns aren’t specific, but he’s been roughly going after bigger and bigger kingdoms. My guess is Blue and Light Blue must be next.” Yami pointed out.

“What do you mean roughly? Right after he took Green, which is considered a medium sized kingdom may I remind you, he went after Grey, fucking Grey, the tiniest kingdom! After Grey they also went for Yellow! Their pattern is random as hell, like they spin a wheel everytime to decide! We need equal defenses for all the rest of the kingdoms, and if anything happens, we can send a bulk of the defenses over.” Zeta said.

“Oh, my bad Prásinos, I’ll check myself next time I make a suggestions, your highness.” Yami fake bowed in his seat.

“Fuck you Koizumi!” Zeta playfully raised a middle finger at Yami, who responded similarly.

“I think there’s a better time for that. Zeta, how were you when you lost all thirteen of the time gods?” Satan said.

“Right, right, sorry, I wanted to break the tension.” Zeta sat up straight in his seat.

Once that distraction was done and over with, they began discussing their plans more. Satan felt oddly hopeful again, yet also fearful.

Was Amber right?

June 15th

Crickets chirped as Satan crawled into bed, after being up for hours and hours. He’d spent his days since the meeting with other royals in constant meetings, occupying his time with as much work as possible. Only when he began hallucinating Takahiro and scaring the few demons that worked in the palace did he finally slink back into his apartment. Even him sleeping had to be mandated by the workers at the palace. As soon as Satan’s head hit the pillow, he immediately drifted off.

But only for an hour.

After an hour into possibly the best sleep in his life, yet again, Satan’s phone vibrated on his night table. He slowly sat up, eyes closing, then opening. Then closing. Then opening. Then closing. He rubbed his eyes and face with a groan as he went to grab his phone.

Zeta.

Fuck.

“Hello?” Satan steadied himself, trying not to lay back in bed and doze off.

“So… there’s a situation.”

“When is there not… What is it this time?”

“Takahiro and Katherina are invading Orange right now.”

“It’s… eleven o’clock at night!”

“That’s what I said when I heard about it! Can you help?”

“Normally I’d say yes, but I haven’t slept. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’d want my help this time when I’ve started to hallucinate Takahiro and Katherina.”

“Shit… Alright, it’ll be fine. Probably…”

“I hope so. Goodnight.” Satan yawned, before immediately plopping back onto the bed, drifting back to sleep.

***

June 15th, Eris

Eris leaned against the yellow wall as Zeta called Satan. To her left, her descendant Yami paced back and forth. She listened into Zeta’s conversation, trying to guess the specifics as she watched Zeta bite his lip so hard it started bleeding.

“Guess not, huh…” Eris moved from the wall she was leaning on. “Not surprised. He has not been doing so hot as of late.”

“Didn’t need to tell me. Anyway, can we get a move on, please?” Zeta wiped his bloodied lip.

“Right.” Eris said. She used her gold and black colored chaos magic to teleport to the Fire Clan in Orange.

The voices of conflict seemed to fight each other in unintelligible speech, yelling at each other about something not even Eris knew. The feelings of disagreement and friction weld up in Eris after teleporting, but she would not act on them. She knew by now how that went.

“Ugh! Is your magic supposed to make you feel like you want to get into a fight?” Zeta held the sides his head in his hands.

“Yeah, sorry, I shouldn’t have used it on you.” Eris brought her gaze to the ground.

“I’m glad great-grandma didn’t inherit your magic, I sure wouldn’t want to listen to that each time I used my magic. Uh, no offense.” Yami said.

“Yeah, none taken.” Eris said with widened eyes, locked on the flames.

“Wait, wh- Holy shit.” Zeta said, joining her and Yami as they looked on.

Not too far in front of them was the main city of Orange. There were many circular houses and buildings with roofs of made of grass in all varying sizes. The largest one stood out the most, looking as if it were multiple circular houses put next to each other and connected. The walls were a vibrant orange and it even had two torches on poles with fire. Unfortunately, the largest was not safe from the path of destruction, as the roofs had all practically decimated and the walls melted, the orange coming off and revealing a more light sand color.

“Wow, burning another capital city of a kingdom, how original.” Eris raced towards the fires.

“I don’t think that’s what we should be most worried about.” Yami ran with her.

They ran closer and closer towards the fire, joining the citizens that screamed and panicked with each other.

“What happened?” Eris asked one woman, with warm skin like a dark oak tree.

“We’re not quite sure, but Takahiro’s army torched one house as a distraction, and now that it’s spread we’re having trouble putting them out. Even with the Water Elemental’s help we’re struggling.”

As Eris listened to the woman, taking her hands in her own, the citizens began shouting and running in another direction. She could’ve sworn she heard them shouting about Takahiro. When her eyes looked onto the commotion there he was.

Takahiro with Katherina.

“Yami! Zeta! Help them put out the fire, I just saw Takahiro and I’m going after him!” Eris yelled to them as she began running. She heard them freak out with the other citizens at the mention of seeing him, but she couldn’t deal with that. The other citizens all eventually slowed down, but only Eris remained. Eris made fists at the sight of them.

“She’s still there, let’s teleport somewhere!” Eris heard Katherina say to Takahiro.

“Hold on, I can’t run and think of where to teleport.” He mumbled back.

Eris began to use her magic, surrounding the two with the voices of discord while she teleported in front of them. Hesitantly, she removed her magical voices of discord from them. They glared at her with furrowed brows and frowns.

‘Bad idea, Discordia. Now what? You don’t have the means to take them into custody.’

Takahiro turned into his shadow form, his entire body becoming shadowed and black. Except for his eyes, which were now fully gold, sclera and everything, that glowed as he stared Eris down. Katherina pulled out her pink kunai from the garterbelt on her exposed leg. Takahiro teleported behind Eris in seconds while Katherina’s butterfly wing shaped ears fluttered, aiming her kunai at Eris.

Eris used her vanilla magic this time to teleport, sliding back on the grass while Takahiro and Katherina exchanged glances.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself after what you did?” Katherina demanded as she properly aimed this time and threw her kunai.

“I know what I did, and I’m sorry.” Eris dodged, running over a nearby tree and leaning against it.

“Do you really hate me that much that you’d leave without telling me?” Takahiro glanced at the ground and his shadowy form faded back to his more humanoid self. His fedora shadowed over his eyes.

“Wh- No! I never hated you, it’s just… complicated…” Eris trailed off as she happened to turn her gaze back to the village.

Fire spread even faster. Flames swallowed everything in it’s path, from the citizens to more houses. The screams and cries grew louder. Eris coughed and her eyes watered at the smell of the smoke that blew into her face, even unwillingly tasting it. She frantically scanned the pathways in between all the buildings, for Yami’s high ponytail and Zeta’s mask over his eyes. Finally, her eyes fell onto them, running from the fire and beckoning forth the citizens to join them and the many others as they raced away.

‘Thank Iris…’ Eris thought as she turned to where Katherina and Takahiro once stood. But all she could see was more of the fire. If only circumstances were different a night in the woods would’ve been nice.

If only.

“Fuck!” Eris screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘Well, no use dwelling now. I guess I can go teleport back over to the guys…’

She teleported over, being launched right in the middle of the racing citizens.

“What happened?” Eris yelled over the chaos.

“I don’t know! I was filling a few buckets with water thanks to the Water Elementals, we put out a few of the fires, suddenly, the fire is everywhere. It’s only been a few minutes too.”

“That goddess, ‘Esato, she must be doing this!” Zeta said.

“Don’t you dare take our goddesses’ name and use it like that! ‘Esato would never do this without a good explanation!” A citizen of Orange that had been running with them pointed an accusatory finger at Zeta.

“Oh, I’m sorry, just throwing a theory out there.” Zeta said.

The group continued running. Eris was starting to pant and slow down. The ports were closer and closer now though, they were almost there. Eris could’ve sworn she saw a familiar face, but only when she got closer did she recognize the face.

Amber Murazvo.

Right next to her were her Kiyoshi, Crow, Bree, and Kuroyami, who leapt at Yami and hugged him, almost making Yami fall over.

“Holy shit, Amber! Do you know the status of the other clans?” Eris asked.

“They’ve all been taken, Fire was the last one. They managed to mess with the internet lines so none of the other clan leaders could get in contact with me.” Amber mumbled as she looked ashamedly down at the ground.

“Already? Is there nothing we can do?” Eris said.

“You could try. At this point, there’s a low chance you could do. When there was that attempted takeback on Green, it didn’t really go over well.” Amber readied the boat and motioned for her citizens to get on.

“Maybe we shouldn’t bother.” Yami mumbled to Eris.

“Alright. See you, Amber.” Eris said.

“See you.” Amber said in a barely audible voice as she lead her friends onto the boat and departed.