Chapter 1083: A Wife Dies
Lailah could hear the heartbeats of everyone else in the room.
No one was in the mood to sit down and listen to her rattle off theories. But that was precisely why they needed to.
Lailah knew the type of man Percival was. He was a hedonist, a zealot, a vengeful-minded bigot and a man passionate about the act of bringing misery to as many people as he could, through as cruel a means as he could think of.
His meticulousness was the only thing that rivaled his propensity for violence.
And as much as it all seemed like something he would do, Lailah wasn’t buying it. She, and they, were all missing something.
Ayaana split into the rest of her bodies.
Lailah grabbed Eris by the hand and pulled her in closer.
‘W-What are you-‘
‘Stay close to me.’ Lailah squeezed her hand. ‘All of this… has too many hallmarks of a vision I had a long time ago.’
That wasn’t exactly comforting for Eris to hear as someone who was intimately familiar with Lailah’s visions. ‘What… kind of vision?’
‘One like this. With the house on fire and a woman I didn’t recognize at the time dying in my arms.’
‘…I’m certainly not going to die today, love.’
‘No, you are not. But just in case, put some armor over your chest and stomach so you don’t get stabbed.’
‘H-How accurate are your dreams again..?’
‘Not always, it’s just… sometimes trying to avoid something is exactly how it happens.’
Lailah moved back into action just as Eris’ face lost all of it’s color.
“What did he do before we got here?? What was he saying??” She asked the group.
Everyone looked towards Karliah, who rubbed her throat unconsciously.
“N-Nothing that seemed pertinent… He was just pretending to be Ziz and saying how being a grandmother didn’t fit my personality.”
“He was right…” Satan whispered under his breath.
His brother Belphegor turned to stare at him incredulously.”Dude, seriously? Not right now.”
Bekka held her arms out for her mother as Abaddon finally released her. “H-He didn’t hurt you, did he? Let me see you-”
Karliah swatted Bekka’s hands away. “S-Save your worry for someone who actually needs it, small wolf. As if I would be harmed by a childish little man with no-”
“Mom, just… shut up for a second!” Bekka snapped.
Karliah fell silent. Perhaps she was just shocked that, for the first time, Bekka was yelling at her without anger, but with hurt instead.
Bekka lifted her hand and brought it between her mother’s breasts.
There was a drop of blood there. It was so small she could have missed it.
The blood came from a puncture wound the size of a pen head. But to Bekka, it might as well have been as large as a cannonball.
Karliah saw her daughter’s ears fall down, and she became more uncomfortable than she knew how to put into words.
“O-Oh, that little thing? Your husband was just staring a little too hard, that’s all.”
For the first time ever, Bekka didn’t take the bait. Her eyes became watery as she held her mother’s head in her chest. “Oh, mom…”
Karliah was too stunned to move and simply let her daughter do what she wanted. But she felt something shift in their relationship at that point. She didn’t know what it meant yet.
“I can no longer stand around…”
Abaddon descended from the air, his body still vibrating with an immense rage he couldn’t swallow.
As soon as his feet touched the ground, he left scorch marks on the carpet.
His family could feel the hums of power radiating off him even through the floor.
“He has to die. Today.”
“Abaddon-”
“He is in our home, Lailah. The place our children lay their heads. Where our family and friends rest!”
“I know that, but it doesn’t make sense! He didn’t do anything but show up! If he were really trying to hurt us, then he could have taken the kids before we realized it, killed someone in the house or freed Dagon!”
“He’s doing this because he thinks he has me cornered! That I’ll just sit idly by because of Yesh’s punishment!”
“I don’t believe that! You would only be sealed for a hundred years, and that’s nothing to us! Besides, we would still be here! It’s not a big enough payoff for him to take this kind of risk!”
Any other time, Abaddon would have properly heard out everything that Lailah was trying to tell him.
However, on this day, he just couldn’t bring himself to listen to anything outside of the blood rushing to his head.
And Lailah knew that she was losing him.
She felt it first.
The firm grasp that she’d had on all time in the universe was currently being overtaken by him. Time was starting to move again in the heavens.
“Abaddon, I am begging you to wait for just one damned second!” Lailah placed her hands on Abaddon’s chest and spoke to him in a pleading voice. “If you love me, then-”
‘Lailah.’ Eris suddenly said telepathically. ‘Let him do it.’
‘What?! No, he’ll-‘
‘I’ve figured out exactly what is going on, and I know what’s about to happen. I need you to trust me, and I need you to do exactly what I say…’
Lailah was often a woman who struggled with weighing the scales of logic and emotion.
That struggle had never been more prevalent in her life than it was in this moment.
And she was quickly running out of time to make a decision in which to trust.
– Heaven…
Lailah looked towards Eris just as Abaddon pulled his spear out of his chest.
Just before the weapon left his hand, Lailah bit her lip and threw her body into her husband’s.
Time seemed to go in slow motion for those three.
Abaddon, despite his profound rage, could still clearly see Lailah’s weeping face as she pinned him underneath her.
He felt agonized. Remorseful.
At the same time, Eris watched the spear fly.
As Possibility, she also had quite the mind for calculations and an absolute understanding of quantum theory.
She knew the spear was going to hit the Ophanim.
She glanced across the aisle and saw Percival’s face widening into a beastial smile, ladden with drool.
‘I knew it…’
This had been his goal from the beginning. But she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
Eris encased the entire colosseum in a protective shield just before the Ophanim was hit. Demons included.
When the stone angel exploded, Percival threw his body at the energy wave, attempting to absorb it.
However, he didn’t see Eris’ barrier until the last moment.
He slammed into it like a bug against a windshield. His gleeful smile became a twisted roar of anger.
Unprotected by the barrier, Eris threw herself into the blast and held out her hands.
She screamed as she absorbed an unfathomable amount of energy into her body all on her own.
The sound shredded the hearts of all who heard it, even if the blinding light would not allow them to see what was going on.
Eris made herself larger, believing that if her body covered more surface area, it would make it easier to absorb the energy that powered the Ophanim.
It didn’t.
Eris stood as a bright green bipedal dragon with a more slender, feminine figure in comparison to Abaddon. Her wings, like Valerie’s, appeared to be made of a delicate, lace-like insect material. Large enough to wrap all of heaven in their velvetty touch.
A large pair of antlers grew out of her head, glowing as she stuffed her body with even more energy than she could handle.
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!!”
Percival’s tantrum increased in dramatics as he bashed his head against the barrier, scratching and clawing at it as blood ran from his temple.
Through the immense pain in her body, Eris locked eyes with him and smiled. Everything she was going through now was worth it if it meant she got to see a scene like that.
She enveloped the last of the energy in her body just as Abaddon and the other wives broke free of their confinements.
When the light finally died down, Eris, a humanoid woman once more, was falling from the sky.
“ERIS!”
Abaddon held out his arms and raced to catch his wife.
He could see that her body was in a terrible state from trying to hold all of that energy in. Eris had did her damndest to leave nothing for Percival to absorb.
Her veins were brimming with more energy than they could contain. It was easy to spot them glowing beneath her skin.
And that glow was only becoming brighter and brighter. Abaddon knew that it couldn’t have meant anything good.
He finally caught Eris and prepared to cradle her in his arms.
But at the moment he touched her, her entire being shattered.
Not into glass or bits of flesh. But into millions of glowing bulbs resembling a swarm of fireflies.
Abaddon was frozen in shock.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.
He watched his wife slip through his fingers and was paralyzed to do anything about it.
A tear of blood ran from both eyes. His pupils quivered.
When he finally got his voice out, it was not that of an enraged monster or a wrathful god. It was that of a man who loved a woman.
“…eris..?”
–
She felt cold.
At one point, she thought she might have liked that, but this brand of chill was uncomfortable. Uncompromising.
She didn’t like it. She wanted to go back.
I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’ve compromised us enough as is.
She didn’t want to hear that. She wanted to go back to the warmth.
Think of our predicament, little shell. You were never supposed to exist. I was never supposed to cast you aside. It’s better you come back.
She became angry. Those things did happen. She did exist. She got to live and love and nurture and hate. And she wouldn’t pretend for a second that she hadn’t.
She would not stay in hiding. Not when she knew she was still needed.
She had risked everything just to get back to this place, to speak to her. All so that she could ensure her future, and that of the man and women she loved. The family they held dear.
And now she would be heard.
….Look upon me then. And let’s hear what ‘I’ have to say.