After about another hour of traveling, we made it to Hana’s kingdom. It’s a beautiful place, all built in the trees. Various flowers are blooming and butterflies are fluttering about.

What didn’t look good was the massive army of those dark energy beings lurking outside. There were so many, like one massive wall of darkness, radiating this disgustingly evil energy. All four of us charged through them like a freight train. Virgo used the ground itself as a weapon, pulverizing every dark being that came her way. Helena, Celena, and I also used our powers to destroy them, but there were so many of them. For every one destroyed, three more would take its place. We became pretty exhausted, pretty quickly. Those things were sapping our energy. Yin knew we were coming to help Hana and specifically made these beings to drain us of our powers. That was honestly clever of him.

We heard a familiar crazy cackle and up came a horribly burnt Abaddon. Parts of him looked charred.

“Ya think hurling me into a volcano would keep me down? Hate to break it to ya toots, but that ain’t gonna stop me!”

Virgo formed and hurled a large boulder at him, hoisting it over her head with her bare hands as if it was just a pebble. He barely dodged it. I made a mental note not to anger her. Helena was a bit freaked out and I was just stunned at her strength. Celena looked as if she'd seen it many times before.

“I gotta stop underestimatin’ you,” Abaddon said, very freaked out. He held his hand out and shouted in a commanding voice “ATTACK!”

The dark creatures began attacking us once again. We fought them off as best we could, but our energy was being slapped by those things.

Suddenly, I had an idea. Before anyone could protest I used my space powers to summon a black hole big enough to swallow that dark army. Using my powers, I controlled the black hole to only suck up that army and nothing else. Within ten seconds, the army was destroyed and I closed the black hole. Everything else was untouched.

Helena, Celena, Virgo, and Abaddon all stared at me in complete and total shock. No one could form words for a solid five awkward minutes.

“Um, is anyone going to say something? I asked, breaking that awkward silence.

“Okay, I’m outta here. My stallin’ job is done.” Abaddon stated with his hands raised in a defensive posture. He was absolutely freaked out. He teleported in a burst of red and black energy.

The girls regained their bearings and we all started heading towards the palace, easily destroying more of those weird creatures within the town.

When we arrived, we saw another man looming over Hana while she was trapped by ice against the wall. The man was threatening her. I impulsively shot some light at the man and hit him in the back, causing him to stumble. He turned around. His hair was pale blue, his skin was ice blue and his eyes were dark blue. He looked at us with pure hatred.

“Don’t disturb us! We’re having a civil negotiation.”

Hana was struggling to break free. Her hair was long and green, wearing a flowy white gown with green accents. Her eyes were pink like a rose and her skin was olive in tone.

“Yeah, freezing her against a wall is sooo civil,” Celena said sarcastically.

“I’m not giving that tonic to him, Moloch,” she growled, still struggling. Virgo ran up to the man and nearly slugged his face.

“LET HER GO YOU-” she proceeded to call him every vile name known. Everyone in the room stared at her in shock. That was the day I learned that she has a tongue as sharp as a knife and as hot as the flames of hell.

Virgo kept trying to punch Moloch, her fists burning with fire. He kept avoiding her, causing her to get even angrier. She blasted two fireballs at him, which he avoided.

“You missed, how pathetic.”

“I wasn’t aiming for you,” she retorted with a smug grin.

We heard something shatter. Hana managed to free herself. It was then I realized what Virgo did.

She was intentionally trying to maneuver Moloch to a position where she could easily free Hana with her powers.

Hana ran over to us.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now let’s send this jerk back to Yin!”

All of us went after him, but due to previous battles and our energy being sapped, we struggled a lot.

Hana’s power over nature helped us quite a bit. She was able to use the energy of nature and life as a weapon, creating little magic orbs that exploded with energy that damaged Moloch greatly. He counters with his ice. I made a barrier of light to protect us and buy us time to regain our energy. Hana used some sort of healing magic to restore some of our energy. Her powers must’ve been sapped as well. We’re gods, but even we aren’t immune to energy drainage.

Moloch just kept attacking us trying to break the barrier I made. Holding the barrier was taking up a lot of my energy.

“Everyone, I’m going to let the barrier down. You need to attack all at once. Ready?”

They nodded. I let the barrier down. Celena shot a glowing arrow and the rest of us combined our powers with it, turning it gold. It shot Moloch directly in the heart. He fell over, dead. At least, that’s what we thought. As it turned out, it was just a copy. The body immediately turned into ice and shattered.

“It was just a copy,” I said.

“I knew something was off...” Helena said, her voice trailing.

“If a copy fights like this, can’t wait to see the real one,” Virgo said with a frown. She looked at Hana. “What happened to your wings?!”

“Beelzebub happened,” she stated. Her face suddenly drops and color drains from her face. “Oh no...” Hana immediately rushed to another part of the castle. We followed close behind.

We made it to a gigantic garden filled with all sorts of plants, all of them were dying and decaying, being eaten by these tiny, monstrous looking flies. Hana looked like she was about to burst into tears at the sight of it. Fury engulfed me and I charged through the garden, heading to the center.

“Yang! Wait for us!” Helena shouted to me. I was too in the zone to stop and wait. All I could think of was finding who was responsible for the destruction.

Up ahead I saw someone, another guy who is also one of Yin’s generals. His hair was dark grey with a black streak, shaved on the sides with short bangs. His skin was a pale yellow and his eyes were a darker shade of yellow. His wings were shaped like a wasp’s and colored dark yellow and black with small splotches of white mixed in. In one hand I saw the all-cure potion, in the other was a small orb of black and dark yellow energy, radiating a suffocating aura of decay.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Without thinking I rammed into him, knocking him over and causing him to drop the potion. He quickly grabs it before I could even move, but the orb of energy was gone.

“Damn it! Why did you do that?!”

“To stop you, obviously.”

He took a good look at me.

“For a second there I thought you were Abaddon or Moloch. Whatever.” He stands back up. “The name’s Beelzebub, you must be Yang.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be thirty miles underground?”

“I had a little help from my babies.” Some of his demon flies landed on his hand as he said that. He petted some of them gently.

I charged after him again. He flew up and I followed. In a lightning quick move, I take the potion from his hand. I notice that the girls are up with us. A mischievous idea came to my head.

“Hey, give that back!” Beelzebub shouted as he charged after me. I tossed the potion to Virgo. She immediately knew what I was doing. Virgo put a hand on her hip sassily.

“You want it that badly,” she began. “Then come get it!”

“Damn bitch!” He shouted at her.

Beelzebub chased Virgo around before she tossed it to Helena. Beelzebub chased after her for a bit too and she tossed it to Hana. She flew around with it- with her powers- but was stopped by the swarm of Beelzebub’s demon flies. She looked for a way around, and finally just tossed it to me. Beelzebub and I were chasing after it. Just as I was about to grab it, some of his demon flies swarmed around it and carried it over to him quickly.

“Thanks for the present babe,” Beelzebub taunted Hana with this malicious grin. “I’ll be sure to write you a thank you note... after this world falls under Lord Yin’s command.” He teleported away with a laugh, and his demon fly swarm went with him.

We all immediately went down to assess the damage. Hana began weeping, which quickly turned into crying. We all tried to comfort her as best as we could. She turned to me with pure anger in her eyes.

“This is all your fault!” She shouted. “If you and your brother didn’t have your stupid fight, none of this would be happening!”

“Hana-”

“GET OUT!! GO AWAY!!!” She cried. Virgo and Helena consoled her. I tried to console her too but she kept shoving me away. Hana eventually just caused some plants to literally throw me out of her kingdom.

I waited patiently for them for a few hours. While I was waiting, I thought about what Yin told me regarding his plans.

“Why shouldn’t we show these inferior beings that they should bow to us?!”

I began to doubt my capabilities as the light half of Xero. I felt as if I should admit defeat and surrender to him. But that would make all of reality suffer. Me surrendering to him would mean that he would be free to conquer every world he can get his hands on, knowing I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

I couldn’t just allow him to win. Hana is just angry and I understand why.

Yin and I have opposing ideals and values. He wanted to conquer everything and I just wanted to live in harmony with everything. The entire war started because of our ideals and values. It’s almost as if we were trying to see whose values are right. I thought that maybe if I could just talk to him again, we could reach some sort of understanding and end the fighting before it gets out of hand.

At sunset, the girls came out.

“Hana, are you feeling better?”

She nods, her eyes red from crying so much.

“Yang. I’m sorry for yelling at you. I know you were just trying to stop him... I let my emotions get the better of me.”

I went up to her and hugged her.

“It’s okay. The anger is justified honestly.”

She looked down.

“Dark powers took your wings, correct?”

She nodded, not meeting my gaze.

“Let me try something.”

Some of my golden light went to her back, and her wings grew back. They’re green butterfly wings. She smiled brightly.

“Thank you!” She hugged me. I returned the hug. “And about the garden. I need your help. Do you have enough energy to clear the rest of the darkness in it? Helena managed to clear about a quarter before she was too exhausted to continue.

“I should have enough.”

We walked to the garden. I did see that the dark aura was somewhat cleared and the plants looked a little more alive.

I radiated my light and holy aura. The dark aura subsided after a few minutes and the plants came back to life, somewhat. Hana used her powers to fully restore her plants to their original beauty and vigor.

We all cheered. The battle was won but the war was far from over. What we didn’t know was that the battle was just a diversion away from a massive storm that was building over the ocean.

☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯

Abaddon and Beelzebub arrive at the throne room of a large and intimidating temple, surrounded by a dark and barren wasteland littered with skeletons of people unfortunate enough to be devoured by the monstrous creatures that roam the land. Sitting on the throne was Yin, bandaged and weak with an eyepatch over his missing eye. His cloak was wrapped around him and the hood was still over his head, with his remaining eye he glared at his two generals. Abaddon and Beelzebub knelt before him with heads bowed.

“Where’s Moloch?” Yin inquired.

“Dealin’ with Pisces m’lord,” Abaddon replied.

“I see... and where’s the army I gave you two? I expected some of it to return.”

“Fang used a black hole to suck ‘em all up, yer majesty.”

Beelzebub looked at Abaddon surprised.

“He can do that?!” Beelzebub asked.

“I was surprised too.”

“Shut up,” Yin commanded. The two shut their mouths and looked down. “My brother is the god of light and space. If he so desires, he can easily cause massive black holes strong enough to swallow entire universes. Abaddon, his name is Yang. Get it right,” he scolded with a frown.

“But m’lord. He’s yer enemy, why should we give him proper respect?”

“Are you questioning my authority?”

“N-not at all! I’m just... curious.”

“Regardless of whether or not my brother is my enemy, purposely mispronouncing my brother’s name is quite insulting to me. If you recall, we are two halves of the same entity,” Yin explained angrily. “If I hear word of this again, I’ll send you back to where you came from.”

Fear flooded Abaddon's eyes and he gulped.

“Are we clear Abaddon?”

“Crystal, m’lord.”

“Good. Now, Beelzebub. The potion.” He held a hand out, demanding the potion.

Beelzebub struggled to uncork the potion bottle for Yin. Abaddon took it from him and opened it easily.

“I weakened it for you.” Beelzebub said to Abaddon. Abaddon rolled his eyes.

Beelzebub walked closer to Yin, knelt again, handed the potion to him before going back to his original spot and kneeling again. Yin took the potion and drank it, fully healing all of his wounds and causing his missing eye to grow back. He took off the eyepatch, stood up from his throne and stretched.

“Ah, that feels better. Too bad my energy isn’t fully restored yet. You two did well.”

The two demons smiled, happy about being praised.

“However, daring to show your face to me after failing to destroy Atlantis isn’t going to be without consequence.”

Beelzebub and Abaddon’s faces dropped in utter terror. They know that Yin’s punishments are always severe and leave people mortally injured or dead.

Yin gave a small yet cruel smile. He enjoyed how terrified his two generals became. He used his abilities to cause darkness to strangle the two of them and to give them the sensation of their insides being torn apart

Neither of them could breathe as they writhed with agony. Their faces were pleading as they tried to beg him to stop. Eventually, he stopped. Beelzebub and Abaddon inhaled air and were coughing as they regained their breath. Yin laughed slightly.

“Next time, I expect whatever area I command you to destroy to be wiped from the face of that pathetic little rock. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” they replied in unison, still catching their breath.

“Good. Now leave my presence.”

Abaddon and Beelzebub teleport out of the throne room.

“Incompetent fools,” he muttered as he sat back down on his throne. He sighed, annoyed. His mind turned to another matter he’s been dealing with on the side. “He will accept my invitation to join me, regardless if my brother meets him or not.”