Aegon’s praise sounded sincere. He clearly hadn’t known about Liora’s intervention .. she’d appeared after his escape from Noctherra.
Still, he’d sensed something had happened, so he’d sent Calistes on ahead and lingered to watch. He had tried to return to the heights, but Liora’s barriers had turned him back .. and Frey had marked his presence the moment they descended; his aura had returned in full.
"Aegon... you knew everything from the beginning, didn’t you?" Snow asked, cold.
"I did. Calistes has been mine for a long time. I apologize for the deception .. but it was the optimal way to bring the Church down," Aegon replied.
"The optimal way to bring the Church down... and the best way to make you the biggest winner, right?" Snow sighed, annoyed.
Snow was beginning to understand the prince better and better .. now able to glimpse a piece of the real power that made Aegon so consequential on the board.
"Where are the War Angels?" Frey asked this time.
The Church had possessed two War Angels at SS+ .. both of which now belonged to Aegon.
"They’re under Bishop Calistes’s control. He is, of course, wholly loyal to me," Aegon answered without hiding a thing.
"In other words, they’re under your control," Frey said, a dry laugh slipping free.
At day’s end, Aegon had acquired three SS+ .. class weapons: two War Angels .. and the turncoat bishop.
The finale hadn’t gone exactly to plan thanks to Blattier, but overall...
He was the greatest beneficiary.
"Those angels are the crystallization of thousands of lives sacrificed," Uriel said, remembering how Blattier had seized them. "Weapons that should never have existed."
The Path of Sacrifice.
It had nothing to do with the Lord of Light. How the Church had laid hands on it remained a mystery.
"From now on, these weapons will be harnessed for the Empire. I’d say that’s the most fitting use," Aegon smiled, eyes closed.
Silence held for a few seconds.
"A crushing victory for our side, then—yes?" Frey asked with a smile. Aegon nodded.
"Correct. We’ve won, and all that remains is to crush the Ultras and end the war."
Aegon’s gaze slid over the three before him, his mind working as always to ferret out the truth behind them. He wanted to know what had happened the moment he’d left .. but he knew these three would never tell him.
No hurry. There were many ways to reach the truth. That was his specialty.
Once the four were together, Snow gave Frey a nod to teleport them back to Imperial forces; he had no desire to deal with the prince any longer.
But Frey didn’t move. He stood there, head bowed, looking at his clenched fist.
"Crushing the Ultras and ending the war... that would be a lovely ending," he murmured. "Unfortunately, the Ultras aren’t our only enemies."
Slowly, the air around Frey seemed to change.
Slower. Heavier.
"Our enemies are everywhere .. lurking in the shadows, watching from every side, waiting to strip us of everything we hold dear.
"The Church was only the beginning. What’s coming is far worse."
He lifted his face to the sun blazing over their world, eyes narrowing by degrees.
"The Ultras. The demons. And many more."
"They’re all our enemies."
Aegon nodded. ""You’re right .. the game will only get harder, which means we’ll have to play better, won’t we?" the prince said, playing along with Frey.
"That’s right," Frey answered. "Because we won’t win..."
He paused. A baleful gleam flared in his eyes, a chill racing the spines of everyone present.
"...until every last one of our enemies is dead."
SLASH!!!
None of them understood what had happened until it was too late.
They grasped the truth only when the blood fountained .. and that dreadful black blade flashed into view:
Balerion—the Black Terror.
With a single stroke carrying all of Frey Starlight’s might, he severed Aegon’s neck at a speed beyond comprehension. The prince’s head spun away through the air as his body toppled, slowly, into its own spreading blood.
"...Huh?" was all that slipped from Aegon’s lips before his head rolled across the ground, painting a thin red line.
It felt unreal. Impossible.
Frey stood there, staring down at Aegon’s corpse ... undisguised contempt dark in his eyes.
As for Snow Lionheart and Uriel, both froze, unable to process what had just happened.
Stunned, Snow opened his mouth and asked,
"Frey... what did you do?"
"Something I should’ve done a long time ago." Frey answered at once.
Turning away, leaving the prince’s corpse behind him, Frey came back to the other two. "Let’s leave this place."
Ignoring their looks, Frey sank inward, preparing to trigger his teleportation. In those brief seconds, his eyes fell on a line on his system interface:
Current Achievement Points: 0
’I’m tired’...
Remembering everything from the start of the war, Frey felt exhausted—not in body, but in spirit.
In that fleeting moment, memories flashed .. things he had buried deep, and the reason he had refused to use the system’s powers during the war.
-Glimpse of the Future-
As his enemies multiplied and the war grew more vicious than ever, outcomes became uncertain. The chance of defeat rose.
Unable to shake the dread of what lay ahead, he had used that power again and again, trying to see where the war would end.
The Glimpse had shown him dozens of scenarios already. He’d used it so often his Achievement Points had run dry.
But no matter how he tried, no matter what he changed, the Glimpse showed only one ending.
At the end of the war, far ahead in the future...
He saw a sea of corpses. A place where death had spread and life had been stripped away.
Bodies of the Empire’s warriors .. every last one of them. All dead.
Every time, standing there, he understood:
"We lost."
Every time... they lost. And what made it worse was that he could never discern exactly how they lost.
So Frey had tried to change the future again and again, but whatever the scenario, the result never shifted.
"I’m tired..."
He was tired of the visions he’d seen .. unaware that using that ability so often had side effects on those around him as well, making them catch fleeting glimpses of their distant futures.
Pushed to his limit by all he had seen, Frey chose to play rough this time, to face everything head-on...
And the first step was that damned prince.
"The end is close. There’s no room left to retreat."
Either they won and escaped the fate set for them...
Or they lost, and were dragged along by the dark current of destiny toward ruin.
Taking hold of both Snow and Uriel, Frey prepared to return and plunge into the final act of the War of Darkness .. the Chapter that would end the conflict between the Empire and the Ultras once and for all.
...
...
...
Far from Frey and the others—high in the sky—
Sitting quietly in the center of a vast crater of devastation, Geppetto exhaled.
"That saint surpassed my expectations. Who would’ve thought she’d go so far .. burning her body, destroying it completely .. just to keep me from taking her?"
He sounded annoyed, and that was all. As expected, he had won. The saint was dead.
But the end hadn’t been what he wanted.
The island had become a mass of ruin, their battle a natural disaster.
"She would’ve made a splendid addition to my collection... but it doesn’t matter now."
Floating slowly away from the island .. which had already begun to fall .. Geppetto left once his task was done.
"I wonder how Zibar is doing..."
The battle raging in the shadows had reached its own peak . It wouldn’t be long before everything was dragged into the light.
Between humans and demons, a bitter struggle awaited .. and only the future would answer who would stand victorious in the end.
...
...
...
Author’s Note:
This is the end of the Between Shadow and Light arc, and the beginning of Arc III: Shadows of Wesker.