The two blades - one shrouded in pure destruction, the other glowing with red flashes that lted into boiling blood - advanced in a final, fatal collision.
The hatred of ages pulsed in every strand of energy that escaped the cuts, tearing apart the very essence of the demonic world. It wasn't just a confrontation. It was the denial of each other's existence. A scream of pure destruction. This was the clash of two Demon Queens' Ultimate Techniques.
The ground beneath their feet didn't just crack, it had been torn like old cloth, exposing an abyss of absolute emptiness.
The pillars of the demonic coliseum, erected with the blood of demons, began to crumble in silence. So crumbled to dust before touching the ground. Others shattered with sharp cracks, while panicked screams echoed from the stands. Colossal rocks shatter, fragnting before they even fall.
The sky seed about to collapse.
And then... sothing appeared...
At the height of the collapse, a silvery figure brutally cuts through space. The light is violent, but silent. Both blades that were about to collide with enough force to open an interdinsional rift... are stopped. Not by magic. Not by shields.
But by two bare hands.
There, between chaos and the end, was Sepphirothy.
His body seed to be made of shadows and ruin. White hair danced in chaotic waves, defying gravity. Her eyes.... deep, abyssal, like conscious black holes - show no anger... just the kind of disappointnt that even the gods would fear if they faced her.
"Stop this shit!" she snarled, her voice reverberating in dinsional layers. Each word carried the weight of eons. "Children. Spoiled. Fucking."
The sound of her voice echoed like muffled thunder.
And then, what had collapsed stopped. Not by a blow, but by the raw pressure of his presence. The air beca as thick as molten lead. The space around her curved. The two Queens, Raphaeline and Cabernet, seed small. Microscopic. Like dust in front of a black hole.
Their swords trembled... and crackled. Their blades scread in fear of Sepphirothy's Aura.
They don't break from physical effort, but from existential insufficiency in the face of sothing infinitely superior.
As soon as she stopped the blow, the impact that would have destroyed the world began to leak out in the form of residual energy.
The ground exploded. A crater three hundred ters in radius ford, swallowing up columns and stands.
The Colosseum, once the greatest infernal monunt to war and glory, crumbles like wax under a demonic sun. Millennia-old statues shatter. Black marble is torn away like rotten bark. The air vibrates with such violence that the atmosphere implodes and rebuilds itself in erratic cycles.
Of the six hundred thousand demons in the stands, few are still breathing. Many were pulverized. Others received the rain of blood and died. So evaporated due to energy instabilities. Only a fraction survived - the most powerful or those protected by the barriers erected by Sapphire.
Now, so tremble in silence. Others cry blood. And there are those who have simply gone mad.
With a simple, almost bored gesture, Sepphirothy strikes the swords with the back of his hand. The blades fly like poorly made toys, cross the arena and crash violently into the outer walls of the coliseum. The stones tremble as if trying to escape the touch of the weapons.
Raphaeline and Cabernet fall to their knees exhausted after using up almost all their energy. Their wide eyes don't understand. Their exhausted bodies begin to tremble. They - the Demon Queens, sovereign, invincible - are now just powerless spectators.
Sepphirothy has co closer. Each step is a subtle earthquake. Ti slows down. The blood flowing from thousands of wounds recedes. The burnt stones regenerate. The ashes suspended in the air condense, returning to the bodies they once held.
The coliseum begins to rebuild. But sothing is wrong.
Ti hasn't just been healed.
It has been reversed.
Everything around them returns to the exact mont when Raphaeline and Cabernet entered the arena, as if the whole catastrophe had never happened.
But they know it did. They can still sll the death in their hair. They can still hear the screams echoing in their bones. The coliseum could be back. The demons may be alive again.
But the trauma remains.
"Now listen to very carefully," she says in a low tone, but sharper than any blade. "Sit down. Over here. Now," she says, pointing to two spots on the floor with the precision of soone who is far, far beyond patience.
Raphaeline and Cabernet looked at each other like two children caught red-handed. Cabernet tried to argue, but Sepphirothy held up a finger - just one - and imdiately the two queens sat down with a synchronized "plof" on the floor of the reconstructed arena, legs crossed, hands in their laps, trying to look well-behaved.
Sepphirothy began to walk in circles around them. Her dress fluttered angrily, even in the absence of wind. It was the kind of tension that would make even Tempo himself sit still in a corner.
"You... almost destroyed... an entire dinsion... why...?"
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Raphaeline sniffled, lowering her eyes. "It's just that... she... she called ... useless..."
Cabernet snorted, crossing his arms. "And I only told the truth."
"YOU ALSO CALLED A FAKE QUEEN!" Raphaeline exploded, pointing her finger. "You said I'm only on the Queen's throne because of my mother and-"
Before she could finish her sentence, a flash of devastating energy cut through the air. In an instant, Sepphirothy was standing in front of Raphaeline, his forehead almost touching hers, his eyes like fiery cosmic vortices. The surrounding space froze. The echoes of the universe ceased.
"YOU WOULD DARE START A FIGHT OF EXISTENTIAL ANNULNT PROPORTIONS. FOR THIS?"
Raphaeline was sweating. Literally. And she was making the ground lt around her with sheer panic. She stamred.
"I-I... it's just that... she... provoked and..."
Sepphirothy raised his hand. The sa hand that had held two swords that would destroy reality. It was enough to make the Old Gods run for cover.
But before the hand ca down, a figure appeared between them with a soft dinsional "shup".
It was a young man with razor-sharp features, short white hair and red eyes, wearing, of course, a bluish overcoat.
He grabbed Sepphirothy's wrist with a firm hand.
"My dear mother," he said in a soft voice, but it reverberated like a crystal being knocked. "Calm down."
Sepphirothy froze. The air, which was shaking with pure energy, seed to sigh with relief. Raphaeline fell backwards onto the floor, panting.
The figure between them smiled, leaning slightly towards her mother.
"If you kill my Raphaeline because of a fight of egos, I'll be very angry with you, you know? I'd be very sad. Do you want to see your beautiful son sad?"
Sepphirothy snorted. He took a step back. "I wasn't going to do anything, she just annoyed ! Besides, why didn't you stop her before that stupid thing?" she grumbled.
Vergil smiled, like soone who has heard this a hundred tis before. "All the sa. Let's breathe. You taught : there are worse punishnts than death."
Sepphirothy looked at him for long seconds... then let out a deep sigh and pointed at Raphaeline and Cabernet with two fingers.
"You're both grounded. No fighting for three lunar cycles. You'll have to spend three whole weeks living together, without killing each other and without generals. And every night you will send handwritten reports explaining what you have learned about each other."
The two queens paled.
Cabernet muttered: "This is worse than the Swamp of Twin Souls..."
"I know," said Sepphirothy, giving a dangerous smile, "and if you try to cheat, I'll lock you in a thirty-cubic-ter room with Ceremonial Lord Phangulus... talking about dinsional etiquette over dinner... for six hours."
Raphaeline began to cry softly. Cabernet stared at the floor as if he wished a portal to nothingness would open right there.
Vergil tilted his head slightly, as if he was watching sothing charming and ridiculous at the sa ti. And then, in a gesture completely out of keeping with infernal protocol - especially in the face of an entity capable of facing Entropy head-on and apologizing angrily - he hugged her from behind.
It was a calm, firm and loving embrace. His arms wrapped around Sepphirothy's waist, pulling her lightly against his chest. She froze.
Literally.
Even the weather, which seconds before was roaring like a caged beast, seed to go "shhh".
"Will you tell why you've gone so long without visiting your son?" Vergil whispered in her ear, his voice as smooth as old silk and as dangerous as promises made by blind oracles.
Sepphirothy... shuddered.
For a microscopic instant, the absolute entity of light and ruin seed... vulnerable.
A red heat rose from her neck to her ears, and a reluctant shade of pink - absolutely dood to oblivion - tried to tint her cheeks. She gritted her teeth with an audible sound. The kind of sound that would make a wall of the ethereal plane crumble with empathy.
Then, without any warning, she turned abruptly and threw Vergil with a push that sounded more like a gravitational explosion.
He flew back a few ters, did a full pirouette in the air with offensive elegance and landed with a soft thud, like a petal thrown hard by a bored god.
"I was solving problems!" shouted Sepphirothy, arms crossed and cape rippling with pure indignation. "VERY important problems, far beyond the comprehension of all of you!"
Vergil wiped an imaginary leaf off his shoulder. "Yes, mother. Problems involving collapsing realities, certainly... and absolutely nothing to do with avoiding emotional conversations, eh?"
Sepphirothy let out a guttural sound and pointed at the sky. The sky responded with a dislocated thunderclap that sounded like "really?".
"YOU'RE ALL GROUNDED. EVERYONE. I'm surrounded by drama!" she shouted into the void, spinning on her heels.
Cabernet raised her hand shyly. "Do we still need to make the reports or is this general outbreak canceled?"
Sepphirothy grunted like a volcano with a headache.
Vergil, still standing, crossed his arms and smiled with the patience of soone who has seen the show a thousand tis.
"Mom... co to the house once in a while, okay? I miss you. Even though you're... you." He said smiling and Sepphirothy's face flushed before she tried to run but was stopped by...
"You're not going anywhere. We have to talk." Sapphire appeared in front of her. Their aura rose before...
"I'll abandon you both if you fight." Vergil said.
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