An agonizing scream echoed from deep within the forest.

Akachi wondered if it was one of the other Healers and was immediately grateful that whatever was happening to them wasn’t happening to him.

The following silence lasted briefly as he cringed at the heavy crunches in the snow that sounded from behind. He glanced back at Gill, more precisely, his ever-expanding gut stretching out his already extra large gold and black jacket.

With a thick puff of condensation bursting out of his mouth, the Demonologist said, “That is like the seventh time you did that, mate. Why don’t you just take a picture while you’re at it?”

“I would, but your fatass would take up too much space in my phone,” Akachi said with a fiendish smile.

“Oh, wow, what a creative fat joke,” he responded, making a feigned astonished look. “And you came up with that all by yourself and on the fly.” He started clapping slowly while he nodded. “You should be proud of yourself!”

Akachi’s smile was wiped clean off his face as quickly as Gill finished his dishes. He stood, now glowering at the Third-Born, allowing the powdery snow to slip into his sandals, touching the bottom of his feet and between his toes. The snow that sprinkled from above and the jet streams that came from all sides weren’t enough to make Akachi regret his choice of attire.

His single striped sweatshirt sweater and regular black jeans were more than enough. Akachi was even feeling muggy in the clothing.

“Man, I would’ve preferred to be killed by that storm than getting lost with you,” Akachi said. He thought back to running into Gill shortly after coming to his senses. He wished he just went walking in the opposite direction instead of approaching him.

“We’re not lost,” Gill said. “All we have to do is follow the Black Magic energy coming from the house.”

“You mean the energy coming from your slaves?”

“They’re not slaves. It’s all voluntary.”

Kinda like what a demon overlord would say, Akachi thought. The lump on the back of his throat began to burn.

“Oh, we both know you’re using some kind of Black Magic to get them to all serve you.”

Gill made a snicker and pocketed his meaty hands into his jacket. He started sauntering, moving around the area, and neared one of the spruce trees. “Is that it?” asked Gill while looking up at the snow-covered tree. “Is that the problem you have with me? You think I am enslaving those beings?”

Akachi marched across the snow field, approaching Gill as he said, “Let’s get one thing straight.” He stopped once he was standing face to face with Gill again, getting him to look back at him.

Akachi had his nostrils flaring and jaw clenching in accordance, all the while shooting daggers at Gill up close. He went on, “Most of your servants are demons, and I couldn’t give two shits about what happens to any of them.” He put his hand over Gill’s squishy chest and shoved him back.

Gill was thrust into the trees, making the whole plant shake and dump a bank of snow onto him. He kept his classy composure and didn’t even bother shooting a look at his attacker.

“Secondly!” Akachi continued, his voice now elevating. “That’s not the problem I have with you. I… just… I don’t like looking at you. You’re disgusting, and it pisses me off.”

Gill calmly brushed off the snow on his beanie and shoulders as he said, “That I am of a higher rank than you.”

Akachi felt his entire body burn up like a dial was turned up all the way. “You were just born before me. It’s just the order of birth with us. Being the Third has nothing to do with power.”

Gill pocketed his hands again and got closer to Akachi with their foreheads inches from touching. “How do you know?” he said softly, mockingly.

“Because I am sure as hell that you aren’t a stronger Healer than I am.” Akachi balled both his fists, exposing bulging veins beneath his skin, sprawling from the back of his hands to his elbows.

“You’re better at acting like an ape. That’s for sure.”

The world muted for Akachi. His vision weakened. The scent of the snowy mountains vanished, and he could only taste a strong metallic taste in his mouth and an expanding white-hot rage inside of him as if he had swallowed a grenade. He backed up slowly, his legs feeling heavy, like they were filled with hot lead.

“What did you just say to me, you racist fuck?” he hissed.

Gill put his hands behind his back and sighed. “I’m not being racist. You throw your insults about my body over and over but can’t handle it when you think something related to yours is thrown back at you.”

Akachi stomped forward and blindly shoved Gill again. “You weren’t born fat, moron.”

After bouncing off the poor spruce tree. Gill returned to his default position instantly and continued, “Anyway, what I said has nothing to do with your color, but instead on how you act.” Finally, Gill revealed his scowl of repugnance. “Bullocks, mate. Walking around with barely any clothes on and having no self-control. Gloating all the damn time about screwin’ female beings and gods here and there, consuming this and that, drinking day and night. You’re the disgusting one.”

“Oh, you’re talking to me about self-control? That’s rich!”

“Maybe if you spent half the time you use partying with washed-up deities to instead study magic, then you could be a better Healer than I am.”

“I am a better Healer than you! I am better at healing magic, offensive magic, defensive magic, summoning magic—”

Gill broke out into hysterical laughter, staggering back into the spruce tree. Even in a clearly uncomfortable position with the pointy branches of the tree pricking his back, sides, and nape, he laughed uproariously.

Without saying a word, Akachi backed up a couple of feet. He crouched and brought his hands together with the fingers interlocked. “Hippocratas,” he summoned.

A mist of intense, bright green swept past Akachi, stripping him of his clothing and leaving him with a loincloth, pieces of bone, and red feathered tribal armor on his shoulders and legs. Symbols appeared all over his bare body, the most notable being a sizeable medical cross on his back. Satchels and knives in sheaths materialized on his body as well.

And crowning it all was a massive goat skull headdress. Large horns stretched and twisted down from the top of the skull, with a clump of wine-red ostrich feathers protruding out. from the top of skull where there also a clump of wine red ostrich feathers protruding out.

Even after equipping the Healer’s Garb, Gill was still laughing—it evolved into gales of laughter as if multiple people were laughing.

Deciding that it was time to put an end to the fit, Akachi conjured a crooked staff with a green skull on top and wine-red feathers on the back. With the pointy bottom of the staff, he drew a magic circle in the snow and then pushed his hand down on it.

The magic circle, the skull of the mask, and his eyes all radiated a bright green glow. A skeletal eel-like creature sprouted from the glowing magic circle, releasing a splash of water, and dove right at Gill.

In a split second, Gill made a hand sigh and summoned a beast of his own. A large demonic fishman was conjured and grabbed hold of the skeletal eel. They wrestled until the fishman wrapped its opponent into a knot and then snapped it in half.

Akachi’s monster vanished, and then Gill called off his.

“You’re not a better summoner than I am,” Gill said. He then held up his index and pinky fingers, making devil horns, and summoned, “Torzelas .” Black flames climbed up his body and transformed into a long black robe with demonic markings lined down the sides and sleeves, and an upside-down cross formed on the back. A mask made out of black flames covered his mouth. He glowered at Akachi as the bottom of his robe flickered and crackled continually.

Akachi had his hand over his magic circle once again and, this time, summoned a skeletal beast on four legs with the head of an alligator.

As the monster went in for the attack, Gill pulled his mask down and summoned a giant gold bat that gobbled it in seconds.

Hippocratas, communicating with Akachi in his mind, kept encouraging him to keep going and not get discouraged. He just needed to focus on summoning bigger things.

Gill beat him to it and summoned a woman in a gray kimono covering her face with her long dark hair. She ambled across the snow and towards Akachi.

The woman halted and began to writhe as she wailed. Four giant, hairy legs tore out from each side of her back and planted themselves into the ground, lifting her up. Akachi struck his staff into the snow, pressed both hands into the magic circle, and summoned a large skeletal werehyena.

As it kept the Jorogumo busy, Akachi dashed towards Gill and attacked. The fatass annoyingly kept up with the hand-to-hand combat, effectively blocking his strikes and kicks.

Gill landed a swift punch, hurting Akachi’s pride along with his jaw.

Casting honor aside, Akachi pulled out a glowing, enchanted knife from one of the several sheaths on him and leaped for an attack. He slashed the side of Gill’s cheek and seeing some of his high-cholesterol blood spill made Akachi smile like a child.

The reverberations and commotion from the summons pulled Akachi’s attention away from his bleeding opponent. The Jorogumo and werehyena had reached a stalemate. Each trying to land the last deadly blow.

A heavy blob thrust into Akachi from behind, and he fell facedown into the snow. A guttural cry bleated out of Akachi as Gill dropped onto his back. He could feel his spine and ribs trembling under the massive pressure, and Hippocratas was screeching for Akachi to get the big oaf off it.

Gill wrapped his arm around Akachi’s throat and squeezed. “Admit it, you hate me because you are jealous of me.” the fatman said.

“What is there to be jealous of?”Akachi shouted and clenched his knife. He thrust it upwards until he felt flesh and heard Gill’s piercing cry of pain. Akachi moved the blade a few more inches to the side, feeling warm blood drip onto his nape and Gill’s screaming elevate.

Once he pulled out the knife, Gill got off him. Scrambling back to his feet, Akachi saw a pathetic but satisfying sight—there was a long, deep slit across the other side of Gill’s cheek. He was now rocking a permanent smile.

Gill was writhing on his feet with his hands on his lacerated bloated cheeks.

Akachi looked over at the monsters, and his werehyenna was winning. It had the Jorogumo pinned, biting off its spider legs one by one.

“I wanna hear you say it, fatass,” Akachi said, cleaning the blood off the knife on his wrist. “Say that I am the better Healer.”

With a blank look, Gill halted for a moment and said, “No,” in a deep, demonic voice.

He grabbed the bottom half of his mouth with one hand and the upper half with the other. Like a bizarre circus performance, he began to pull in opposite directions, stretching his mouth open. Gill bellowed in agony as he continued pushing his mouth open, the tears on the side of his cheeks widened with blood squirting out, and the flames of his robe intensified.

A confused Akachi equipped another knife from his sheath and listened to his Garb’s order to attack immediately.

Gill’s jaw was stretched all the way down to his gut by the time Akachi got near him.

A black-horned demon sprung halfway out of Gill’s mouth and stabbed Akachi in his chest with its horn.

After the sickening squelch came an agonized scream from Akachi as he pulled away, and the demon retreated back into Gill’s mouth. Akachi tried to heal the wound with magic, but it didn’t work. He looked down at the bloody hole on his right pec. It was seething with a sinister purple aura.

He heard a loud whimper and looked over at the summons. With just two spider legs left, the Jorogumo was piercing through the anatomy of the werehyenna, slowly killing it. They then both disappeared.

A disturbing discord had Akachi refocus on Gill. It was a cacophony of random noises he was somehow making—bleating, buzzing, retching, gurgling, purring, growling, and demonic susurrus that sounded like thousands of different voices at once.

Gill upper back curved horrendously and remained that way as a river of black goo spewed from his overstretched mouth.

Nothing could prepare Akachi for the monstrosity that he was about to witness.

###

There were a bunch of beaconing sources of magical power calling her over, but Aida decided to focus on just one and follow it. A malicious aura she had focused on so strongly over the years, she could distinguish it from anything else. That with the scent she dedicated to memory and the footprints in the snow, it was just a matter of time before she encountered the miscreant.

Her hunt across the snow brought her to her target. Aida found her big game leisurely ambling about.

Aida had difficulty controlling her breathing. It was coming out rapidly and hot even in the extreme weather. She got into a fighting stance, keeping one foot forward while the other stayed a few inches back. A long sheathed katana silently materialized in her hands with a sheathe that resembled a painting that belonged on a Japanese hanging scroll. It was a jet black sheathe lined with kanji characters and orange flowers eddied around like a whirlwind.

She gripped the sheathe with one hand and delicately hovered her other hand over the black hilt wrapped in orange while slightly tilting forward. It was an iaijutsu stance—the art of the quick draw.

She kept her eyes straight and ferocious, fixated on the witch. It would be so easy to end her life here and now. The thought ran rampant in her head, offering her images of the hundreds of ways she could put the infamous Angel-killer out of her misery.

As she bit her lower lip with saliva oozing off the sides of her mouth, Violet halted and turned back to her.

“Are you here looking for some treats? Sorry to disappoint you, I have none.”

Aida released her lip, slightly disappointed at her excitement keeping her from making the finishing blow, but it wasn’t a problem. The victory over the Second-Born would be much savorier this way.

“Oh, how lucky it is for me to find you here all alone, Violet,” Aida said, grinning wolfishly. “I’m not sure if you were behind that cyclone storm or not, but I don’t care. I am just going to do what I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.”

Violet put a hand on her hip. “And what is that?”

“There’s a big chance that you’re the Damned, and I have a feeling that killing angels isn’t the only thing on your agenda.”

Aida tightened her grip on the handle of her sheathed katana and then glanced at the crescent moon-shaped handguard piece. “I don’t think I’ve ever properly introduced you two to each other. This is Tsukikaze—”

“I don’t care.”

Aida smiled and then tilted her head to the side. “Thank you for making this increasingly easier for me,” she said. “We’ve all been separated, so there’s no reason for anyone to think of foul play when you don’t turn up. It’s the perfect opportunity.”

“So, what, are you going to try to kill me?”

“Oh, Violet,” she said softly. “I won’t be trying anything.”