P.S this story starts a few years before the start of our favorite DXD verse!
AND I DON'T OWN ANY DXD MATERIAL, ALL CREDIT TO THE ORIGINAL WRITERS!
"Talking out aloud"
'Thinking with ones mind'
"Spirits inside the sacred gears talking"
Without further delay, lets start the chapter!
Occult Research Clubroom
"—and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I found myself rowing across the cold grey waters off the Scottish coast with two soaking wet exorcists-in-training. One of them carried in my arms like a princess from those fairy tale books Millicas loves so much, and the other slung over my shoulder like a sack of particularly violent potatoes," Marid finished his tale with a flourish of his hand, his lightning blue eyes practically glowing with mirth as the clubroom erupted.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Issie howled with laughter, nearly falling off the couch he shared with Asia, while Kenta did not even bother hiding his roaring amusement, his deep laugh echoing off the walls of the clubroom. Akeno giggled into her sleeve with her signature 'Ara ara' while even the ever-stoic Koneko had the corner of her lips twitch upwards. Saji and the rest of the Sitri peerage members in attendance were not faring any better, with Momo and Tomoe leaning into each other for support as they laughed.
Rias and Sona, as the dignified governors of Kuoh, tried their absolute best to maintain their decorum.
They failed. Spectacularly.
"A sack of… pfft… a sack of potatoes," Rias wheezed behind her hand while Sona's shoulders shook silently, her glasses sliding down her nose as she fought a losing battle against her own amusement.
On the other side of the clubroom, seated stiffly on the couch that had been arranged for their guests, the reactions were decidedly different.
Xenovia Quarta looked as if she was about to pop a blood vessel. Her hands were clenched so tightly around the wrapped bundle on her lap that her knuckles had gone bone white, and her golden eyes burned with the kind of frustrated fury that only came from being reminded of one's most humiliating defeat. Being manhandled was bad enough. Being manhandled by a DEVIL of all creatures, and then having said Devil cheerfully narrate the event to a room full of other Devils years later? That was a special kind of torture the church had never prepared her for.
Irina Shidou, on the other hand, had gone an impressive shade of red that almost matched the Gremory hair around her. The chestnut-haired exorcist hid her face behind her twin tails, peeking out between strands of hair as the memory of being princess-carried across that windswept island replayed itself in her head for what felt like the hundredth time that evening.
'Why did it have to be the princess carry…' Irina wailed inside her own mind. 'Lord, please give me strength. And maybe a hole to crawl into. Amen.'
The third and final exorcist, a young man perhaps in his early twenties with short black hair, a neatly kept beard, and calm grey eyes, simply sipped the tea Akeno had served him with the patient air of a man far older than his years, one who had clearly chaperoned more than his share of disasters already. Masomi was his name, and unlike his two younger companions, he had listened to the entire story with what could almost be described as professional interest. Young as he was, he carried himself with the quiet steadiness of a recognized prodigy, the kind of talent the church marked early and groomed for greater things.
"In my defense," Marid continued once the laughter had begun to die down, leaning back into his seat with his own cup of tea, "I did try to introduce myself peacefully. Twice, in fact. It is hardly my fault that the church trains its students to swing first and confirm the target's identity… well, never, apparently."
"You were a Devil desecrating holy ground!" Xenovia finally snapped, unable to contain herself any longer.
"I was a teenager carrying out a stray Devil contract handed to me by the Great Satan Faction itself, my presence on church-aligned soil cleared with Heaven in advance, every form signed and every box ticked," Marid corrected smoothly, raising a single finger. "And it was in the middle of that perfectly sanctioned errand that I noticed I had picked up shadows. Three of them, in fact, trailing me and Yumi across half of England. The two of you…" he nodded at the women beside Masomi, "…and your dear mother."
A flicker passed across Xenovia's face at that, there and gone.
"So I led the three of you somewhere quiet to have our little chat. The ruins of a kirk, on an island that had been abandoned to the seabirds for the better part of a century. A kirk, might I add, that your own church had given up on when the last of the islanders were evacuated. There was not a single drop of holy essence left in those stones, and any of you would have known that, had you bothered to check." He let his gaze settle pointedly on Xenovia and Irina. "But you two did not check. You did not confirm my credentials, you did not so much as ask my name. You simply launched yourselves at my head. With swords. Very sharp swords, pointed at a poor, innocent, fully authorized, defenseless young boy. And you lost." He spread his hands. "In your mother's defense, Lady Griselda at least had the decency to fight me for an honest reason. She drew on me only after the two of you had already embarrassed yourselves, and only to salvage what was left of your honor. That duel, I will admit, was a far closer thing. A warrior of real conviction, your guardian. The two of you would do well to learn from her, starting with the part where she confirmed who she was crossing blades with before the crossing."
"Defenseless," Kenta repeated flatly from his position near the window, one eyebrow raised so high it threatened to disappear into his hairline.
"Utterly defenseless," Marid confirmed with a solemn nod that fooled absolutely no one.
Yumi, who had been quietly standing beside Marid's seat through the entire retelling, let out a soft giggle of her own. "Lord Marid did spend the entire following week being insufferably pleased with himself, if my memory serves. He recounted the story to me at least four times."
"Five," Marid corrected without an ounce of shame. "The fifth time included dramatic reenactments."
The clubroom dissolved into another round of laughter, and even Masomi allowed himself a small, measured smile over the rim of his teacup. The atmosphere in the room, which had been suffocatingly tense not even two hours ago when the day had nearly ended in bloodshed and the beginnings of a fourth great war, had finally thawed into something almost… amicable. Almost.
It was a deliberate effort on Marid's part, of course. Rias and Sona had both caught on within the first few minutes of the story. After the disaster of the initial confrontation, the near-catastrophe that had required the personal intervention of the Seraph Gabriel herself to defuse, every Devil in Kuoh understood that the negotiations to come would determine far more than the fate of a few stolen swords. Hostile parties did not negotiate. Laughing ones, occasionally, did.
'He turned his own ambush story into a peace offering,' Sona observed quietly to herself as she pushed her glasses back up her nose, her sharp violet eyes flickering between the son of the Lucifer and the three exorcists. 'By making himself the target of the joke alongside them, he lowered everyone's guard at once. Honestly, the rating game rankings have it all wrong. Power alone never made anyone untouchable, and the rankings only measure power. They have no column for a mind that can disarm a room full of enemies with a single embarrassing story.' A faint, almost rueful smile touched her lips. 'Strength they could rank. This they cannot. Truly… he is the Devil of our generation, in every sense the word deserves.'
It was at that moment, as the laughter finally settled into a comfortable quiet, that Marid set his teacup down on its saucer with a soft clink and regarded the eldest exorcist with open curiosity.
"Now then, Sir Masomi. I have been wondering about something since the moment the misunderstanding outside was resolved," Marid began, his tone still light but his eyes noticeably sharper than they had been a moment ago. "When Gabriel arrived and tempers cooled, you recognized me. Not as 'a Devil' or even as 'the son of Lucifer', but as me. You knew my face, my name, and going by how quickly you ordered your companions to stand down, you knew my reputation as well." He tilted his head slightly. "That little church attack I just finished telling everyone about was never made public. The church buried it, we buried it, and the two charming ladies beside you were sworn to silence, if I recall the terms correctly. So tell me… how exactly does a senior exorcist of the Vatican come to know about me?"
The temperature of the room shifted subtly. It was not hostile, but every Devil present straightened almost imperceptibly. It was a question more than a few of them had been quietly asking themselves.
Masomi took in a deep, measured breath, setting his own cup down before answering.
"I was made aware of you and your… activities," the exorcist said calmly, "by Vasco-sama and Dulio-sama personally."
That got a reaction.
"WHAT?!" Xenovia and Irina's heads snapped toward their senior in perfect unison, their earlier embarrassment completely forgotten. Whatever they had been expecting, it was not that.
"You were briefed on him?!" Xenovia demanded, rounding on her senior with an accusing finger half-raised. "By Vasco-sama and Dulio-sama, personally?! You have known exactly who he was this entire time, and you said nothing — not even after this morning?!"
"Masomi-sama, you let us walk in blind!" Irina added, her violet eyes wide as saucers. "If you had all of this, why were we never told?!"
"Because, Irina, information within the church is distributed on the basis of necessity, not curiosity," Masomi replied with the patience of a man who had clearly given this exact lecture before. "And until approximately six hours ago, neither of you had any necessity to know."
Marid, for his part, looked genuinely intrigued. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "And why, pray tell, would two of the strongest warriors Heaven's side has ever produced spend their valuable time briefing exorcists about little old me?"
Masomi regarded him for a long moment, grey eyes unreadable, before he shrugged in a surprisingly casual manner.
"Because while the church buried the chapel incident, the stray Devil incident was another matter entirely. That one, Lord Marid, is practically required reading among the exorcist corps."
Marid blinked. "The… stray Devil incident."
"Three years ago. The mountains outside Brescia," Masomi elaborated, and the entire clubroom watched in fascination as something extremely rare happened: Marid Gremory's confident expression flickered. "A stray Devil of considerable power, one that had been feeding quietly in the region for months, fell upon an orphanage in the dead of night. It had already torn through the caretaker who ran the place by the time anyone reached it, and the children were to be next — cornered, screaming, with nothing left between them and its jaws." His grey eyes settled on Marid. "Four hunters converged on that orphanage in the very same breath, every one of them tracking the same beast. His Eminence Vasco Strada and Dulio Gesualdo… and two Devils."
"And here is where the surviving report grows… careful," Masomi continued. "Because when those four converged in the dark, there was no mistaking what stood on either side. Hostility, certainly — two Devils and two servants of Heaven, the oldest enmity in all creation, bristling at one another over a houseful of terrified children. By every law of instinct, that night should have ended in blood between them." Masomi's eyes glinted with something that might have been amusement. "And yet not a single blade was drawn between the two camps. Not one. The very instant it became plain that the two Devils had placed themselves between the stray and the children, the enmity was set aside, and all four turned as one upon the true enemy. Two Devils and two exorcists, fighting side by side, until the beast was slain and every last orphan stood safe and breathing. The report names His Eminence, Dulio-sama, and two unnamed Devils who fought beside them — and it says no more than that, for the church has little appetite to set down in ink the night creatures of the pit bled to shield children of the faith. Even so, it remains one of the most quietly debated entries in the modern archives. There is not an exorcist of my generation who has not read it and wondered who those two Devils were."
The clubroom had gone very, very quiet. Every head slowly turned toward Marid.
"You never told us this story," Rias said slowly, her blue-green eyes narrowing at her nephew with the dangerous gleam of a woman compiling a list of grievances.
"It never came up," Marid replied, and then, to the eternal delight of everyone present, the unflappable son of Lucifer actually cringed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh. "And for the record, because I know exactly what that report implies… I did not know the orphanage was a Christian one. The stray was my contract — I had been tracking the wretched thing across the region for days. When I felt it turn toward a building full of children, I stopped caring about the contract and simply acted. The crosses on the walls only registered after I had already crashed through their chapel roof with the stray's jaw in my hand. By then it seemed a little late to be theologically picky about who I was rescuing."
"He sulked about the chapel roof for days," Yumi supplied helpfully. "He kept insisting the church would bill him for it."
"They did bill me for it, Yumi. Vasco Strada personally handed me an itemized invoice while I was still bleeding. The man blocked a stray Devil's death curse with his bare hands not even an hour prior, and his very next act was charging me for roof tiles and a broken pew."
A ripple of laughter ran through the room again, though it was softer this time, colored with something closer to wonder. Issie in particular was staring at Marid with sparkling eyes, his mind conjuring images of the battle.
"What happened after?" Asia asked quietly from her corner of the couch, her hands clasped together. Of everyone in the room, the story seemed to have touched the former holy maiden the most. "With the children, I mean."
Marid's expression softened into something far more genuine than his usual playful smirks.
"The children were… not what I expected," he admitted. "By morning, the entire orphanage knew exactly what Yumi and I were. The sisters made sure of it, mostly so the little ones would keep their distance. Instead, the moment we tried to slip away, the two of us found our path blocked by approximately thirty very small, very stubborn humans." A quiet huff of laughter escaped him. "They thanked us. They had seen the horns and the wings and felt the aura, they knew full well we were not with the church or with Heaven, and they simply did not care. One little girl, Chiara, maybe six years old at the time, grabbed two of my fingers in her whole hand and made me promise to come back and visit. And believe me, I tried to explain why that was a terrible idea. She just squeezed harder. I have stared down high-class Devils with less negotiating resolve than that child."
"So you promised," Sona surmised, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"So I promised," Marid confirmed with the weary dignity of a defeated man. "And I keep my promises. Yumi and I still visit the orphanage regularly. Twice a season, sometimes more if my schedule allows. We bring books, toys, the occasional harmless potion to make the garden bloom out of season. The children are convinced Yumi is an angel, which she has given up correcting."
"They are very insistent," Yumi said with a small, warm smile that spoke of many fond afternoons.
"And the church simply… allows this?" Tsubaki asked, speaking up for the first time, her heterochromatic eyes wide behind her glasses. "Two Devils, freely visiting a Christian orphanage?"
"Allows is a strong word," Marid chuckled. "Every single visit takes place under the direct, personal observation of His Eminence Vasco Strada. The man sits in the corner of the courtyard like a mountain wearing a cassock, drinking espresso, and watching my every move to make sure I am not leading the little lambs astray. Three years of visits, and he has never missed a single one." Marid paused, then added with grudging admiration, "Honestly, at this point I think the children believe he is my guardian. Chiara once asked him, in front of everyone, if he was my grandfather. I have never seen Yumi laugh that hard before or since."
"I apologized," Yumi protested, cheeks pinking.
"You hid behind a fig tree for ten minutes."
While the Devils enjoyed yet another laugh at the story, the two younger exorcists sat in stunned silence, staring at the crimson-haired Devil as though seeing him properly for the very first time. This was not how Devils were supposed to work. Devils were greed and corruption and silver-tongued lies. Devils did not crash through chapel roofs to save orphans and then come back twice a season with toys for three years straight under the watchful eye of the Vatican's strongest. The neat, orderly world the church had painted for them had been taking blow after blow all day, and it was beginning to crack at the edges.
'…He could have died for those children,' Xenovia thought, her grip on the wrapped sword in her lap loosening ever so slightly despite herself. 'A Devil. For children of the church.'
It was Masomi who finally took pity on his two young charges. The older exorcist had watched them wrestle with their worldview long enough, and frankly, after the catastrophe the two of them had nearly caused earlier in the day, a small dose of humility was the healthiest thing they could be given. But there was a time and place for everything, and they had already strayed far from the purpose of this meeting.
The senior exorcist cleared his throat, and just like that, the warmth in the room cooled into professionalism.
"As enlightening as this evening has been," Masomi said, setting his empty cup aside and straightening his posture, "I believe we have delayed the true purpose of our visit long enough. We have already lost a great deal of time today to… misunderstandings." The pointed glance he sent his two companions made both girls wilt slightly. "It would be best for all parties if we proceeded to business."
The change was immediate. Rias and Sona shared a brief glance before both heiresses rose from their casual postures into something far more formal. Akeno silently collected the empty teacups, Yumi and Tsubaki took their positions beside their respective Kings, and the easy atmosphere of the past hour folded itself away like a stage curtain.
The Negotiation
"Very well," Rias spoke first, her voice carrying the practiced authority of a high-class Devil. "Then let us begin properly. As the joint governors of this territory, Sona and I bid you welcome to Kuoh. Officially, this time." A wry note entered her voice at the last words. "Now, representatives of the church… state your purpose in our city."
The three exorcists straightened. Irina glanced sideways at Masomi, silently asking for permission, and received a small nod in return.
The usually cheerful girl took a deep breath, and when she spoke, every trace of the blushing, flustered teenager from earlier had vanished. What remained was a soldier of the church.
"Several days ago, coordinated attacks were carried out against multiple branches of the church across the world," Irina stated, her voice steady and grave. "The targets were the holy relics kept under our protection. Specifically… the fragments of Excalibur. Three of the seven Excalibur fragments have been stolen."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Shock rippled visibly through the assembled Devils. Saji's jaw had dropped open entirely, Momo and Tomoe exchanged alarmed looks, and even Koneko's golden eyes had widened a fraction. Kiba, notably, had gone completely still in his corner of the room, his knuckles white where his hands gripped his knees, a storm barely contained behind his polite expression. Yumi's gaze flickered to her fellow survivor for the briefest of moments, an entire conversation passing silently between them.
Rias and Sona, to their credit, kept their composure, though the sharp intake of breath from the Sitri heiress betrayed her surprise.
It was Marid who broke the stunned silence, and when he did, every trace of the evening's playfulness was gone from his voice.
"Three fragments," he repeated slowly, leaning forward in his seat, his lightning blue eyes boring into the exorcists. "Allow me to make sure I understand this correctly. The fragments of Excalibur. The Excalibur. The holiest sword ever forged by your God's own hand, the bane of every Devil and Fallen Angel that has ever drawn breath, a weapon so dangerous that your church shattered protocol and centuries of tradition just to keep its pieces scattered across separate, fortified strongholds on separate continents." His voice was rising now, not in volume but in intensity. "And you are telling me that three of those pieces were simply… stolen? Right out from under the church's nose?"
Irina flinched. Even Masomi's jaw tightened slightly.
"How?" Marid pressed on relentlessly. "How does the single most heavily guarded collection of relics in the Christian world lose nearly half of itself in a coordinated strike, and the response is…" he gestured at the three of them, "this? Two field exorcists barely out of their teens and a single senior escort, sent quietly into the heart of Devil territory? Where are your legions? Where is the Vatican's wrath? And while we are asking the obvious questions, where in all the seven layers of Heaven is the Pendragon family?" He spread his hands. "The blood of King Arthur still walks this earth. The swords are their birthright, their ancestor's legacy. Why are the descendants of the Pendragon not here cleaning up this mess instead of two jumped-up exorcists?"
"Jumped-up—" Xenovia shot to her feet so fast that the wrapped blade on her lap nearly clattered to the floor. The pressure that rolled off the bundle as her hand closed around its hilt made every Devil in the room taste static on their tongue, the dormant holy aura within prickling against their very nature. "You should be very, very careful about what you say next, Devil. Mock the church again, and I will not hesitate to slay you where you sit with this very sword."
The reaction was instantaneous.
Kenta was off the windowsill before her sentence finished, a low, rumbling growl building in his chest as faint black fur rippled along his forearms. Akeno's smile remained perfectly serene even as tiny arcs of lightning began crawling between her fingertips. Koneko had silently shifted her weight forward onto the balls of her feet, Saji's left hand twitched towards his sacred gear, and behind her glasses Tsubaki's eyes had gone flat and cold. The combined killing intent of over a dozen Devils pressed down on the clubroom like a physical weight.
'This foolish girl is going to get us all killed before sundown,' Masomi thought with rising alarm, already half-rising from his seat, while beside him Irina had gone pale and grabbed at her partner's sleeve.
"Xenovia, stand down—"
And then, cutting through the building storm like a knife through warm butter, came the sound of laughter.
Marid had not moved an inch from his seat. He had not summoned so much as a flicker of demonic energy. The son of the Lucifer simply sat there, chuckling into his hand with what appeared to be genuine, unrestrained amusement, as though the holy blade being half-drawn in his direction was the funniest thing he had seen all week.
"I am sorry, I am so sorry, it is just—" he waved his free hand, struggling to compose himself. "That is the exact same thing you told me right before you attacked me all those years ago. Word for word, I believe. 'I will not hesitate to slay you, Devil.'" He finally looked up at the fuming exorcist, and his grin was all teeth. "And remind me again, Xenovia Quarta… how did that work out for you last time?"
Dead silence.
The unspoken memory of exactly how badly that confrontation had ended for her hung in the air between them, completely unspoken and completely deafening.
Xenovia's face cycled through several fascinating shades of red. Her sword hand trembled, caught in the impossible space between righteous fury and the crushing memory of exactly how thoroughly the gap between them had been demonstrated once before. A quiet snort escaped Koneko. Somewhere behind Rias, Issie had stuffed an entire fist into his mouth.
The killing intent in the room dissolved into something dangerously close to secondhand embarrassment.
"Lady Xenovia." Masomi's voice cracked across the room like a whip, all patience finally spent. "You will sheathe that blade, you will sit down, and you will allow me to conduct this negotiation before your temper starts the very war we were sent here to prevent. Now."
For a moment it seemed Xenovia might actually defy him. Then, with a sound somewhere between a growl and a hiss, the blue-haired exorcist slammed herself back down onto the couch, wrapped sword clutched to her chest, and proceeded to glare a hole into the clubroom's carpet.
Masomi exhaled slowly, pinched the bridge of his nose, and turned back to face the Devils with the expression of a man silently adding another decade to his penance.
"My apologies. As I was saying." He folded his hands. "To answer your question, Lord Marid, the Pendragon family will not be involving themselves because they no longer hold any claim over the blades. Generations ago, the family formally ceded custody of King Arthur's sword to the holy church, in perpetuity. The fragments are church property under every accord that governs such things, both mundane and supernatural. Their recovery is therefore a church matter, to be handled by church personnel." He gestured to himself and his two companions. "Us."
Marid leaned back in his seat, absorbing that, before letting out a short, humorless huff.
"Of course they did," he muttered, shaking his head. "Honestly, that sounds exactly like the Pendragons. An entire bloodline so allergic to responsibility that they handed away their own ancestor's legacy without asking for so much as a copper coin in return." He paused. Then, slowly, a different sort of light entered his eyes, the unmistakable gleam of a merchant who had just spotted a loophole. "Although… if the family truly has made a habit of abandoning King Arthur's relics, then I suppose that means I can keep his other weapons with a clean conscience."
For a moment, nobody moved.
"…Other weapons?" Irina asked carefully, her head tilting. "What do you mean, other weapons?"
"Hm? Oh, did I say that out loud?" Marid blinked with an innocence so artificial it could have been bottled and sold. "How careless of me."
"Marid." Rias's voice carried the long-suffering tone of a woman who knew exactly where this was going.
"Oh, very well." The crimson-haired Devil settled back comfortably, clearly enjoying every pair of eyes in the room fixed upon him. "As most of you know, I spent six years of my life travelling this world. The ancient world, in particular, has always fascinated me, and over the years I completed a great many contracts in a great many forgotten places. Tombs, ruins, sunken vaults, private collections whose owners had long since stopped breathing. And in the course of those years, I came into possession of a number of artifacts that once belonged to the original Pendragon himself." He let the pause stretch luxuriously. "Chief among them… Rhongomyniad. The holy lance of King Arthur."
"WHAT?!"
This time it was not just the exorcists. Half the Devils in the room had shouted as well.
"You possess the spear of King Arthur?!" Xenovia was back on her feet, though this time shock had completely overridden hostility. "Rhongomyniad is a myth! A legend! The records say it was lost after Camlann!"
"It was lost," Marid agreed pleasantly. "And then, roughly fourteen centuries later, it was found. By me. Through a contract I completed along my journey, the details of which are confidential, as all my contracts are." He examined his nails. "Lovely piece of workmanship, by the way. The craftsmanship of that era is criminally underappreciated."
"Return it." Xenovia's demand came out flat and immediate. "A relic of that magnitude belongs with the church. You will return it to—"
"No."
The sheer calm of the refusal stopped her mid-sentence.
"No?" she repeated dangerously.
"No," Marid confirmed, and though his tone remained perfectly cool, something in it had shifted, the playful merchant giving way to something older and far more precise. "And before you reach for that sword again, allow me to explain why no, in terms even the Vatican's lawyers would be forced to accept. Firstly, as your own senior just finished explaining, the Pendragon family ceded custody of King Arthur's sword to the church. The sword. Singular. At no point, in any accord ever signed, did the family transfer rights to the rest of their ancestor's arsenal. The church has precisely as much legal claim over Rhongomyniad as I have over the Pope's hat. Which is to say, none, although I admit the hat is tempting."
Somewhere in the back, Issie choked.
"And secondly," Marid continued, raising a second finger, "and this is the part I suspect you will find far more interesting… the spear does not emit a single trace of holy energy. Not one drop. It never has."
Xenovia opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "That is impossible. It is a holy lance. It is the weapon of the most blessed king to ever live, it—"
"It is a masterwork of mortal and fae craftsmanship wielded by a great man," Marid interrupted, "and that is all it was. Just as Excalibur itself was, once."
The words landed in the room like a dropped blade.
"…What did you just say?" Irina whispered.
"You heard me." Marid rose from his seat now, hands clasped behind his back, slipping without effort into the cadence of a lecturer. It was a tone every member of Rias's peerage recognized intimately from two weeks of brutal training camp. "The Excalibur of legend, the blade pulled from the stone, the sword of the once and future king… did not emit holy energy either. Not when it was forged, and not for the majority of King Arthur's reign. Search your own oldest records if you doubt me, the honest ones, the ones written before the church's historians took their editing quills to history. The blade was extraordinary, certainly. The Lady of the Lake's people do not produce ordinary arms. But holy?" He shook his head slowly. "No. Holiness came later."
"Later," Sona repeated, her sharp mind visibly turning. "You are saying the holy properties were added."
"Precisely." Marid began a slow walk along the length of the clubroom. "It was only after King Arthur formally bound himself and his kingdom to the church that the work began. The finest alchemists the faith possessed conducted ritual after ritual upon the blade, weaving layer upon layer of consecration into the steel. Years of work by hundreds of hands. And when the mortal artisans had taken the metal as far as mortal artistry could go, the final seal was placed by no lesser being than the God of the Bible himself. The blade was brought before Him, and He blessed it with His own essence." Marid stopped, turning to face the room. "That is when Excalibur became the bane of all darkness. Not on an anvil in Avalon, but on an altar in a cathedral. The holiest sword in creation is not a relic of divine craftsmanship, my friends. It is a relic of divine renovation. And since Rhongomyniad was lost to the world long before Arthur knelt before any altar… the lance never received its coat of paint. It is, in the eyes of every law and accord that matters, a historical artifact of the mundane world. Finders keepers."
He sat back down, crossed one leg over the other, and picked his teacup back up as though he had just commented on the weather.
The clubroom was utterly silent.
The exorcists stared at him. The Devils stared at him. Even Akeno had stopped midway through refreshing the teapot. The sheer casualness with which the son of Lucifer had just recited one of the most closely guarded pieces of theological history in existence, details that contradicted a thousand years of church doctrine while somehow ringing with the unmistakable weight of truth, had short-circuited the entire room.
"How…" Masomi's composure had finally, visibly cracked. The senior exorcist was leaning forward, grey eyes wide. "That information is sealed in the deepest archives of the Vatican. Fewer than twenty living souls have clearance to read those records. I do not have clearance to read those records. How could you possibly…"
"Know?" Marid's smile over the rim of his teacup was the very picture of contentment. "Sir Masomi, I fear you and your companions have been operating under a misunderstanding about who, exactly, you are negotiating with. You see, potions and alchemy are merely my trade. My true business…" he tapped his temple, "…is information. I am what polite society calls an information broker, and what impolite society calls a menace. Six years of travel, contracts completed for human governments, magician associations, youkai courts, vampire houses, and several pantheons who shall remain nameless, and every single client paying me in the only currency I truly care about. I know a great many things about a great many corners of the supernatural world, including more than a few things the owners of those corners would prefer I did not." He took a slow sip. "Besides which, I will have you know my knowledge of holy blades is not purely academic. I have had the distinct privilege of studying one in person, under very watchful eyes."
Xenovia's eye twitched.
It twitched violently.
She did not rise to take it. Barely.
'Good girl,' Masomi thought with the weary pride of a handler watching a hound resist a thrown stick. 'There may be hope for you yet.'
Out loud, the senior exorcist only sighed and squared his shoulders. It was abundantly clear by this point that allowing Xenovia anywhere near the reins of this negotiation had been a catastrophic error of judgment, and frankly, her performance thus far could only be described as a piss-poor showing for the church. He would be writing a very long report about this evening. Possibly two.
"The matter of the lance," Masomi said firmly, dragging the conversation back onto its rails through sheer force of will, "is beyond the scope of my authority and beyond the scope of this meeting. I will report its existence and your claim of ownership to my superiors, and the church will pursue the question through… appropriate diplomatic channels."
"I look forward to their letters," Marid replied serenely. "I do so love letters."
Masomi chose, wisely, to let that go. "But that is a matter for another day. Tonight, there is only one matter that concerns us, and it is the reason we were sent to your city." His gaze swept across the three Kings, all humor gone. "The stolen fragments are here. In Kuoh. Our intelligence on this point is certain. We have been tasked with their recovery, by any means necessary, and it is our intention to carry out that task swiftly and quietly." He paused, and then spoke the next words with slow, deliberate weight. "The request we bring from the church is this: that the Devils of this territory do not involve themselves in any battle concerning the holy swords. No assistance. No interference. Whatever you may witness in the nights to come, we ask that you stand aside and allow the church to reclaim what is ours."
A beat of silence.
"You ask us to stand aside in our own territory," Sona said, her voice neutral in the way that only Sona Sitri's voice could be neutral.
"I ask you to consider the practical reality, Lady Sitri," Masomi answered evenly. "A battle over the fragments will be chaos. Holy blades, dark powers, exorcist combat arts, all unleashed at once in the dark. In the midst of such a battle, when an aura flares at our backs, we will have no time to ask whether it belongs to friend or foe. We will strike first and pray for forgiveness after. I have seen well-intentioned allies die that way, and worse, I have seen the wars that started over their bodies." His grey eyes were grave. "After this morning's events, I trust I do not need to elaborate on how little kindling this particular fire requires. Keep your people clear of our battlefield, and there will be no… accidents."
The three Kings exchanged a long look. It was a request that grated against every territorial instinct a Devil possessed, and yet not one of them could deny that the man's reasoning held merit. The morning's near-disaster had proven his point better than any argument could.
"Very well," Rias said at last, speaking for all of them. "Kuoh's Devils will not interfere in the church's recovery of the fragments. You have our word." Then her eyes sharpened. "But if we are to keep our people clear of your battlefield, Sir Masomi, then we deserve to know what manner of battlefield it will be. Who stole the swords?"
For the first time that evening, Masomi hesitated.
The pause stretched just long enough to become an answer in itself. When the senior exorcist finally spoke, his voice was quiet.
"Kokabiel."
The name detonated in the clubroom like a bomb.
"Kokabiel?!" Rias was on her feet, all composure abandoned. "The Cadre?! A leader of the Grigori, here, in our city?!"
"You cannot be serious," Saji whispered, the blood draining from his face. Around the room, the younger Devils had gone pale to a one. They were children of the supernatural world; they had all grown up on stories of the Great War, and the name of the Star of God featured in the bloodiest of them. A being who had warred against the original Satans and archangels themselves. A being who had survived everything the Great War could throw at him and walked away disappointed it had ended.
"We are entirely serious, Lady Gremory," Masomi replied. "The strike teams that hit our strongholds were comprised of rogue exorcists and Fallen Angels operating under his banner. Our intelligence places Kokabiel himself in or near Kuoh as of this week. The fragments are with him."
"And the church sent three of you." Rias's voice rose with every word, passionate heat flooding into it. "Do you have any idea what you are describing?! Kokabiel is a Cadre-class Fallen Angel! A survivor of the Great War! A monster that the combined might of Heaven and the Underworld failed to put down at the height of their power! And you three intend to walk into the dark and take his prize from him, alone?!" She slammed her palm against her desk. "This is not bravery, this is suicide! You will die! All three of you will die in my city, do you understand that?!"
Her concern rang through the room, fierce and genuine. And it was genuine, in its way. But beneath the genuine concern, cold and pragmatic, lay the truth that every King in the room understood with perfect clarity: three exorcists of the church, butchered by a Fallen Angel Cadre on ground governed by Devils attached to two of the four Maos, was not a tragedy.
It was a casus belli. It was the first page of the next Biblical war, written in blood on Kuoh's streets.
The three exorcists understood the true shape of her concern perfectly well. Soldiers of the church were many things, but they were not naive. Masomi's expression flickered with something almost like dry amusement, and even Irina's gaze dropped briefly to her hands.
They ignored it anyway.
"Your concern is noted, Lady Gremory," Masomi said simply.
"We knew what this mission was when we accepted it," Irina added quietly. The cheerful girl's voice had gone steady and calm in a way that was somehow far more unsettling than fear would have been. "If it is the Lord's will that we give our lives reclaiming His swords, then we will give them gladly."
"We are prepared to die for this mission," Xenovia stated flatly, as if commenting that she was prepared for rain. "It is an honor to—"
"Enough."
The word cracked through the clubroom with enough force to make half its occupants flinch.
Marid was on his feet. Gone, utterly gone, was the laughing storyteller of an hour ago, and gone too was the silver-tongued merchant of minutes past. The Devil who now stood glaring at the three exorcists radiated a cold, furious intensity that pressed against the edges of the room, and for the first time that evening, the assembled Devils were reminded of precisely whose blood ran through his veins.
"Prepared to die," he repeated, biting off each word. "Gladly. Gladly! Do you even hear yourselves?!" His voice rose to a bellow that rattled the windows. "You speak of throwing your lives onto Kokabiel's spears the way children speak of skipping stones! This is not martyrdom you are describing, you absolute fools, it is rashness! You are racing each other to die for a cause that was lost before your plane ever touched Japanese soil, and you are proud of it!"
"You forget yourself, Devil!" Xenovia surged up to meet him. "We do not require the approval of—"
"The church wants this war!"
The words struck the room like a thunderclap, and the silence that followed them was absolute.
Marid's voice dropped from a bellow to something low and razor-edged, which was somehow far worse. "Sit down, Xenovia Quarta, and for once in your life, think. Look at the board you have been placed upon instead of the orders in your hand." He began to pace, words pouring out with the relentless precision of a man who had been assembling this argument in his head all evening. "Fact: Kokabiel has never once, in ten thousand years, been subtle about what he desires. He is the Star of God, the warmonger of the Grigori, the Cadre who wept when the ceasefire was signed. Every report, every legend, every drinking story told about that creature agrees on a single point: he wants the Great War back. He has wanted nothing else since the day it ended."
"Fact." He raised a second finger. "Your church knows this. Heaven knows this. Every intelligence service of every faction has known it for two thousand years. And so, when three fragments of Excalibur are stolen by this exact creature and carried to this exact city, the most politically sensitive plot of land in the entire supernatural world, a territory personally overseen by the heiresses of the Gremory and Sitri clans and the firstborn son of Lucifer himself, three High-class Devils attached by blood to the Maos…" He turned on his heel to face them. "…what does the church do? Does it send His Eminence Vasco Strada, a man who once drove Kokabiel from a battlefield with nothing but Durandal and his own two legs? Does it send Dulio Gesualdo, the strongest exorcist alive, the wielder of Zenith Tempest? Does it so much as whisper a word of warning to the Devils whose territory is about to become a war zone, through Heaven, through the magicians, through any of a dozen quiet diplomatic channels that exist for precisely this purpose?"
His hand swept toward the three of them.
"No. It sends two teenagers and an escort, in secret, with vague intelligence and no support, and it does not tell anyone they are coming. Not Heaven's allies. Not the local governors. No one. Three exorcists, dropped blind and deaf into the den of a Cadre who has spent two millennia praying for an excuse." Marid's voice went quiet. "You were not sent here to recover the swords, you stubborn, faithful fools. You were sent here to die. Your corpses are the message. Three servants of God, butchered by Fallen Angels in Devil territory while the Devil governors stood by and did nothing, or better yet, were blamed outright. There is the church's casus belli, gift-wrapped, and the next Great War begins over your bones."
"You lie," Xenovia snarled, but her voice had lost its certainty somewhere along the way. "Even if, even if there were those in the church who wished it, Heaven would never permit such a scheme! Heaven would support the war and the angels do not deceive, so if Heaven stood behind this mission then—"
Marid laughed.
It was not a kind laugh.
"Heaven? Support the war?" He shook his head slowly. "Child, you stood twenty feet from Heaven's true answer this very morning, and you still have not understood what you witnessed. So let us test your theory together. Suppose you are right. Suppose Heaven hungered for this war, suppose the Seraphs themselves were party to feeding you three to the wolves. If that were so, then ask yourself what they would have done with the gift that fell into their laps this morning, a finer pretext than your corpses could ever provide: the church's own field team, attacking the firstborn son of Lucifer, on Devil soil, in broad daylight. Had I died, the war begins. Had I killed you, the war begins. A war-hungry Heaven needed only to look away for ten seconds, do nothing at all, and let history write itself in blood." He leaned forward, eyes blazing. "And what did Heaven actually do? A Seraph, Gabriel herself, the jewel of Heaven's crown, descended in person within minutes to stop it. She did not rattle her blade. She did not demand reparations, did not escalate, did not posture. She apologized. She mediated. She smothered a war that was ninety seconds from igniting, and she did it so gracefully that the Devils of this city will be writing her thank-you letters." His voice dropped, hard and certain. "That is not the conduct of a Heaven that wants war, Xenovia Quarta. That is the precise opposite, proven before your own eyes at the highest possible level. Heaven does not want this war. Which means the orders sitting in Sir Masomi's coat did not come from Heaven at all, no matter what banner they were signed under. They came from a faction within your church that wants what Heaven does not."
He straightened, and the cold fury in his face cooled into something wearier and far older than his eighteen years.
"Every faction has its rot. We have the Old Satan remnants, dreaming of restoring a throne that drowned in blood centuries ago. The Grigori has Kokabiel and his warhawks. And your church, for all its incense and hymns, has whatever nest of cassocked vipers planned this." He gestured at the three of them. "Rogue elements, all cut from the same cloth, all gnawing at the same status quo, all perfectly willing to burn the three Biblical factions to ash if it means the fire starts on their terms. And their methods never change. Tell me, do you truly not see it? An ambitious churchman, expendable innocents fed quietly into the machine, a provocation engineered to ignite Devils and Fallen alike…" His eyes flicked, for the barest instant, toward Kiba and Yumi, both of whom had gone very still. "This city has seen this exact play before. It was called the Holy Sword Project. The only difference between that atrocity and this one is that Valper Galilei used orphans as his kindling… and this time, they are using you three."
The clubroom was deathly silent.
Irina had gone white as chalk. Xenovia stood frozen, fury and horror warring openly across her face, her mouth opening and closing around arguments that kept dying before they reached her lips. The shock and rage radiating off the two young women was almost a physical thing; whether the rage was aimed at Marid, at the church, or at the creeping suspicion that the Devil might be right, perhaps not even they could have said.
It was Masomi who finally moved.
The senior exorcist rose to his feet, unhurried, and placed a steadying hand on each girl's shoulder before either could speak. When he addressed Marid, his voice was perfectly even, the voice of a man who had heard every word and absorbed every blow without once losing his footing.
"I understand your concerns," Masomi said. "You speak some truths I will not insult you by denying. There are factions on all three sides that desire war, ours among them, and the teachings of our faith do command us to stand against Devils. Even so… I agree with you on this much: conflict should not be fought on the backs of innocents. Those who have no part in our struggles should not be made to suffer for them." His expression hardened slightly, grey eyes meeting lightning blue without flinching. "That said, do not mistake us for lambs led blind to an altar. We are fully aware of the danger Kokabiel poses. We have weighed the risks of this mission, all of them, including the ones you have so vividly described. We are prepared for every outcome, and we have contingencies in place to ensure the best possible chance of success. More than that, I am not at liberty to say."
The two of them held each other's gaze for a long, measured moment, Devil and exorcist, while the entire room held its breath.
Then, at last, Marid gave a faint nod and stepped back.
"Then I pray your contingencies are as sturdy as your spine, Sir Masomi," he said quietly, and returned to his seat.
The senior exorcist inclined his head a fraction in return, the closest thing to respect the evening's circumstances would allow, and gestured to his companions. "We have taken enough of your evening. Our gratitude for the tea, and for hearing us out. We will see ourselves—"
He stopped.
His gaze, sweeping across the clubroom one final time, had snagged on the small figure standing half-tucked into the far corner, where she had been quietly observing the proceedings from behind Issie and Kenta for the better part of an hour. Blonde hair. Green eyes. A face that had once smiled down from recruitment portraits in chapels across Europe.
Beside him, Xenovia and Irina followed his gaze, and both of them went rigid.
"Wait," Irina breathed. "I knew I recognized her. You… you are Asia Argento. The Holy Maiden."
Asia froze like a deer caught in lamplight, her hands flying to clutch at the hem of her skirt. "I… um… h-hello," she managed, dipping into a small, instinctive bow.
"The witch, you mean." Xenovia's voice had gone flat and cold, all of her earlier turmoil crystallizing into something sharp with a familiar target. She looked the small blonde up and down, and her lip curled. "So the rumors were true after all. The fallen Holy Maiden, alive and well… and wearing the crest of a Devil household. You did not even have the decency to disappear, did you? You healed a Devil, betrayed the Lord's gift, and now you serve them. You pray with the same mouth that kisses the hand of—"
"Honestly, I almost pitied you when we heard you had been excommunicated," Irina added, and though her tone held none of Xenovia's venom, the wounded disappointment in it cut no less deep. "But to think you would willingly become one of them…"
The temperature in the clubroom plummeted.
Issie shot up from the couch so fast it scraped across the floor, his sacred gear already flashing into existence over his clenched fist, and the look on his face was one none of his friends had ever seen there before. "Say that again," he snarled. "I dare you. Say one more word about Asia and I will—"
"Issie, no!" Asia grabbed his arm with both hands.
He was not the only one moving. A bone-deep rumble had filled the room, and it took the assembled Devils a moment to realize it was coming from Kenta. The Kuroshishi had gone fully silent in the way large predators do before violence, black fur crawling visibly up his neck, eyes bleeding from hazel to burning gold as he took one slow step toward the exorcists. Of all of them, Kenta had appointed himself Asia's older brother in every way that mattered, and the beast in his blood had absolutely no interest in theological nuance.
It took Koneko bodily planting herself in his path, Yumi's hand locked around his forearm, and a sharp "Kenta." from Marid before the rumbling stopped. Rias, likewise, had wrapped her arms around her pawn from behind, murmuring into his ear even as her own eyes promised the exorcists a slow death.
And then, before Xenovia could pour oil on the fire, a weary voice cut through it all.
"That will be enough, Lady Xenovia."
Masomi had stepped bodily between his charges and the Devils, and for the first time that evening, the senior exorcist looked genuinely annoyed. Not diplomatically displeased. Annoyed, in the manner of a man whose last nerve had been filed down to the quick over the course of a single evening by the bottomless bloodthirstiness of his own subordinate.
"But Masomi-sama, she—"
"What happened to Sister Asia, back in Italy, with the Devil she healed, was an accident," Masomi said firmly, his voice carrying to every corner of the room. "A tragedy of circumstance and procedure, not a crime of faith. It was never meant to end with her punished so harshly, and it shames us, not her, that it did."
Xenovia's head snapped around so fast her hair whipped. "How can you say that?!" she demanded, righteous fury blazing back to full strength. "She healed a Devil, Masomi-sama! With the Lord's own gift! Twilight Healing was granted to her so that she might tend the faithful, and she squandered it on a creature of the pit! There is no accident in that, there is only—"
"She did precisely what the teachings of our Lord commanded her to do."
The interruption came quiet and stern as a closing door. Masomi turned fully to face his subordinate, and there was steel beneath the weariness now.
"She was taught, as we all were taught, to heal the sick and the suffering without first demanding to see their pedigree. She found a wounded soul before her, and she eased its pain. That is not betrayal, Lady Xenovia. That is obedience, purer obedience than most of us manage in a lifetime." He paused, then, with deliberate gravity, recited: "'Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.' The Gospel of Luke, chapter six, verse thirty-six."
The effect on the room was immediate and unfortunate.
Every Devil present winced in unison as the verse rolled over them, a stabbing pulse of pain lancing through their skulls like a struck tuning fork. Issie hissed and clutched his temples, Saji doubled over with a groan, Koneko's ears would have flattened had they been visible, and even Rias and Sona flinched, pressing fingers to their brows. Asia, devil enough now to share the punishment, let out a small squeak of pain even as something in her expression glowed at hearing the words spoken in her defense.
"…Ah." Masomi blinked at the roomful of grimacing Devils, and had the grace to look faintly embarrassed. "My apologies. Force of habit."
"Quite… alright," Rias managed, massaging her temple. "Your point was… emphatically made."
The senior exorcist cleared his throat, and then, setting his shoulders, did something none of the Devils expected: he stepped past his subordinates, walked until he stood before Asia herself, and addressed the small blonde directly.
"Sister… no. Asia Argento." His voice was formal, but not unkind. "I will not lie to you, child, so hear the truth whole. I hold no love for what you have become. You are a Devil now, and my faith binds me to count you among my enemies until the day I die. Nothing will change that." Asia's shoulders curled inward, but Masomi was not finished. "But the man is not only his faith, and gratitude is not erased by enmity. For years, your hands healed the sick of a dozen nations. You tended plague villages no one else would enter. You healed pilgrims, beggars, sinners, soldiers… you healed His Holiness the Pope himself, once, when his physicians had begun to whisper of last rites, though I suspect you were never told whose fevered hand you held that night. The church remembers, Asia Argento. Heaven remembers. And whatever the ledgers may now say of you, there are thousands of souls walking this earth who breathe because of you, and one exorcist before you who is grateful for every one of them."
Asia's eyes had gone very wide and very bright.
"And there is one thing more you deserve to know," Masomi continued. "The bishop who cast you out, the man who excommunicated a thirteen-year-old girl in a single night, without tribunal, without inquiry, without a shred of the procedure our law demands… he has answered for it. When the full circumstances reached the Holy Father's ears, the man was stripped of his rank, his titles, and his offices, all of them, and confined under house arrest within the Vatican walls, where he will remain until God calls him to account in person. The sentence was pronounced by His Holiness himself…" a beat, "…and seconded, forcefully, by His Eminence Vasco Strada."
'Which was the better outcome, all things considered,' Masomi added privately, keeping his face carefully composed, 'given that Lord Vasco's opening proposal was to kill the man outright for what he did to that girl. To this day I do not know how His Holiness talked him down. I am told the discussion went on for some hours.'
For a long moment, Asia simply stared up at him.
Then her face crumpled, and the tears came, quiet and unstoppable, years of confusion and hurt dissolving all at once. "They… someone fought for me?" she whispered, scrubbing at her eyes with her sleeves. "I always thought… I thought everyone simply agreed that I… that I deserved…"
"No, child," Masomi said simply. "Not everyone. Not even close."
Issie wordlessly pressed a handkerchief into her hands. Around the room, the murderous tension of minutes ago had drained away entirely, and more than one Devil found themselves regarding the young exorcist with newfound respect. Even Kenta's fur had receded, though he maintained his glower on general principle.
Rias watched Asia's tear-streaked, smiling face for a long moment, the relief on it so profound it made her chest ache, and then, because the moment needed lightening and because she was a Gremory, she turned to Masomi with a slow, amused smile.
"Why, Sir Masomi," she drawled, "such a moving speech. Should I be worried? It almost sounds as though you intend to steal my adorable bishop back from me."
"Buchou!" Asia squeaked, scandalized, through the tail end of her tears.
The exorcist did not so much as crack a smile.
"No, Lady Gremory," Masomi replied, stern and matter-of-fact. "Whatever she once was, Asia Argento is a Devil now, and that makes her, in the eyes of my faith and my office, an enemy. The only reason I stayed Lady Xenovia's tongue tonight is that our mission leaves no room for incidents. Were it any other time, any other place…" his gaze did not waver, "…I would be forced to follow my faith, and do what is necessary. I tell you this so there is no misunderstanding between us. Kindness tonight is not friendship tomorrow."
The honesty of it, brutal and unvarnished, somehow offended no one. It was, every Devil present reflected, the most honest thing any of the three exorcists had said all evening.
And it was Asia, of all people, who answered it.
"I understand," the former holy maiden said softly, and bowed once more, lower this time. "And… thank you for telling me the truth. All of it. I am happy to know Vasco-sama wished to protect me so. Truly. It means more than I can say." She straightened, and though her eyes were still wet, her voice did not waver once. "But please tell him, and His Holiness, that they need not worry for me, and that I am not coming back. I still believe in the Lord. I still pray, even though it hurts now. I still believe in His miracles, because…" her hand found Issie's, and her smile bloomed, small and certain, "…because I am living in one. I have a family now. People who love me as I am. I searched for them my whole life, and it was the Gremory family who found me. I will never leave them."
Masomi studied her for a long moment, this small, gentle heretic with her unshakable smile, and something behind the young exorcist's eyes shifted, very slightly, like a stone settling.
"…So be it," he said at last, and inclined his head to her, a degree deeper than courtesy required. "Then I will pray that your miracle is kinder to you than your church was."
With that, the senior exorcist turned, gathered his two subdued companions with a glance, and started for the clubroom door.
"One more thing, before you go."
Marid had risen from his seat. The son of Lucifer crossed the clubroom unhurriedly, hands loose at his sides, until he stood directly before the three exorcists, close enough that Xenovia's grip tightened reflexively on her wrapped blade. But there was no aggression left in him now. No fury, no theater, no merchant's gleam. What stood before them was simply a young man with old eyes, regarding three soldiers who had been ordered to their deaths.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet enough that the whole room leaned in to hear it.
"Your God may be with you," Marid said, "but you are not God. Faith is not invincibility, and conviction is not immunity from death. I have stood over the graves of brave souls who believed otherwise, and I promise you, their conviction did not slow the blades that killed them." His gaze moved across the three of them, lingering on each in turn. "So hear me, and remember it when the night turns against you, because it will. If this mission of yours goes wrong, set aside your pride and call for help. Scream it to the heavens, send up a flare, pound on our doors at three in the morning, I do not care how. Three dead exorcists serve no one. Not your church, not the three Biblical factions, and certainly not the humans who place their faith in them."
Silence. Irina's lips had parted slightly. Even Xenovia had gone still, staring at the Devil as though he had begun speaking in tongues.
And then Marid turned, and the entire room startled as his gaze landed squarely on Rias and Sona.
"And do not think for a moment that was meant only for them," he said, his voice sharpening. "This is a warning to you both as well. I know you, Rias. I know you too, Sona. Pride runs in our blood as surely as power does, and pride is precisely what gets young Kings killed. Should this come down to a battle, despite everyone's best intentions, then you do not get caught in something you cannot handle. And if you do…" his eyes flashed, "…you call for help. Me, my parents, Serafall-sama, Heaven itself if it comes to that. There is no shame in the entire world that weighs more than a grave. Am I understood?"
The clubroom stared at him in open shock, Devils and exorcists alike. The sheer evenhandedness of it, the son of Lucifer delivering the same blunt warning to the soldiers of the church as to his own blood, in the same breath, hung in the air like something that had no precedent anyone could name.
Rias found her voice first. "…Understood," she said quietly. Beside her, Sona adjusted her glasses and gave a single, sober nod.
The three exorcists looked at one another. Something passed between them, unspoken, and then, to the surprise of every Devil present, Masomi pressed a fist to his chest and bowed. Not deeply. But properly.
"We will remember it, Lord Marid," the senior exorcist said. "May your evening be peaceful."
Irina hesitated at the threshold, then turned back, and for just a moment the soldier fell away and the girl from Kuoh peeked through. "Issie-kun," she said, with a small, crooked smile. "It really was good to see you again. Even like this." Her eyes flicked to Asia, and the smile faltered into something complicated. "Take… take care of each other. All of you."
And then they were gone, three sets of footsteps fading down the old wooden stairs of the school building, and the clubroom finally, finally exhaled.
Occult Research Clubroom, Later
"Well," Akeno said into the long silence, clapping her hands together lightly. "I will put on more tea."
The spell broke. Issie collapsed backward onto the couch with a groan that came from the bottom of his soul, Asia tucked safely under his arm. Saji slid bonelessly down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. Kenta cracked his neck and muttered something in Youkai dialect that Koneko, going by her expression, fully agreed with.
Only the three Kings and their Queens remained standing, gathered now by the windows, watching three distant figures cross the academy grounds in the deepening dusk.
"Three of them," Sona said quietly. "Against Kokabiel."
"Against Kokabiel, Valper Galilei, Freed Sellzen, a strike force of rogue exorcists and Fallen Angels, and three fragments of Excalibur," Marid corrected, his eyes never leaving the retreating figures. "And whatever else our star-loving friend has tucked away for the occasion. Kokabiel does not stage a war without an opening act."
"You believe their contingencies are real?" Rias asked. "Masomi did not strike me as a man who bluffs."
"He is not. The contingencies are real." Marid was silent for a moment. "Whether they are enough is a different question entirely. The church faction that sent them clearly bet they will not be." His reflection in the window glass smiled without any humor in it at all. "Fortunately for those three, the church faction that sent them is not the only player who got pieces onto this board today."
Sona's eyes narrowed. "Marid. What did you do?"
"I delayed a stray Devil hunt this morning by approximately forty minutes," Marid replied lightly, turning from the window. "Which gave certain… interested parties ample opportunity to learn that three particular exorcists were being sent to die in our city, and to develop a deep personal investment in their wellbeing before they departed. Beyond that…" he shrugged elegantly, "…I merely answered the questions I was asked, honestly and in full. Whatever was set in motion afterward is hardly my doing."
"And who, precisely, were these interested parties?" Sona pressed.
"Now, Sona." Marid's smile was serene and entirely unhelpful. "A broker who names his sources is a broker very soon out of business. Let us simply say that the faction which sent those three to their deaths is not the only voice within the church with a stake in whether they live, and that I made very sure the right people were listening at the right moment. The rest is between them and their consciences."
"You turned the church's own people against the church's own schemers," Sona said flatly, "and you will not even tell me who."
"I facilitated a conversation between concerned colleagues."
"That is the single most Devil-like thing you have done all month."
"Thank you, Sona, I do try."
Despite everything, despite Kokabiel and stolen swords and the war pressing its face against the windows of their quiet city, a tired ripple of laughter ran through the clubroom, and for tonight, that was enough.
Far across the academy grounds, at the edge of the tree line where the lamplight failed, the dusk itself seemed to ripple. A tall silhouette resolved out of the gloom for the span of a single breath, ten black wings folding against the darkness as crimson eyes drank in the distant lights of the old school building with naked, ravenous glee.
"Run along, little lambs," Kokabiel murmured to the night, his smile splitting wide and white. "Carry your warnings. Make your little plans. The kindling is stacked, the stage is set… and the Star of God has waited two thousand years for opening night."
A flutter of black feathers.
And the darkness was merely darkness once more.
Chapter End
AND DONE! There you have it people, the full negotiation between our Devils and the church trio! This chapter was honestly so much fun to write, especially Marid absolutely COOKING the church with that war speech (someone get those exorcists some phoenix tears for that burn lol).
Also yes, Masomi is an OC! I know some of you were expecting a certain someone else as the third exorcist but trust me, I have plans for this and the said person, hehehe. Masomi will be added to the Characters doc with the next update!
And before anyone asks, YES Rhongomyniad is the real mythological lance of King Arthur, look it up! Marid the information broker/loot goblin strikes again! What other goodies do you think he picked up during his six years of travelling? Leave your guesses in the comments!
Next chapter, the Olympus meeting FINALLY begins alongside the calm before the Kokabiel storm in Kuoh. Things are about to get spicy on two fronts!
Furthermore, before I end this chapter, I just wanted to urge you all to please COMMENT on the chapters and let me know what you all think. Please write constructive criticism so I know where I am lacking or if my story has some plot holes. These help me greatly improve the quality of my chapters.
Until then stay safe and have fun!
DGZalama out!
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