Chapter 439: The Devil
Auric felt... righteous. Strong.
When his uncle, the most powerful angel in Heaven... the most powerful being in the Triune Worlds, asked him to become the source of Heaven’s power- to be more than just another casualty of Maledict’s attack - he knew it was his last shot at becoming someone in Heaven. Someone whose name would be remembered along with his uncle’s.
Because Auric had nothing special. He’d been an angel like any other. A mage like any other. He’d pushed his body and soul to the limit of power and found himself wanting. So wanting, they’d had to replace some of his organs with godflesh, after he’d been brutally crushed by that traitor, Rainier. Wanting... until Uncle Vinam said those magic words...
"Please accept. Become Heaven’s pillar. Our chariot to the future. I will make sure everyone remembers you..."
Auric remembered the shame of standing in front of the cameras before he was taken by the God Core. What happened after was a haze of faces and sensations. Comings and goings. His uncle, alone once.
But through it all, the lost voices had whispered. Their sources in the flesh of his new body, a body that stole and filtered from the unknowable crystal artifact it hid in its depths. A manastone so strange it produced mana instead of merely storing it. A mana so tinged with a rejection of the world it needed his perpetual reach to contain it. To give it something to reject. And from that struggle came power. Power enough for all of Heaven, limited only by the unchanging pace of its rejection.
But Cassiel never visited... the bitch.
And then, the face Auric knew his uncle hated the most. The abomination birthed by Vinam’s twin. The only one of Auric’s aunts who’d meant anything. Who’d meant much more than Auric’s own mother and father, models of absent-mindedness. Uncle Vinam had shared with Auric the terrible truth that Aeleas, Daughter of Heaven, had betrayed them all.
She had loosed from her womb a metatron - a herald of the end. An abomination. The new Devil of Pride.
The metatron.
The moment the nightmare stepped before him, Auric rejected it, with all his being, willing the dream to end so he could return to his all-important role... But at that moment, he felt power. Power that was all his for this moment. This fight...