Hero's Return 47 The Other Side

In the Depths of h.e.l.l under a violet moon. Azu's team stood in surprise of a giant structure shaped like a tower, it was made of a material akin to red stone with a rugged surface, the shapes of skulls and giant skeletons seemed to merge into the stone, a prominent sight being the coiling red skeleton of a dragon that twisted around the entire structure from it's tail burrowing into the ground below to it's head seemingly resting itself upon the tip of the tower, it's wings drooping downwards.

Towards the ground was a great city that covered an extremely wide area, the city itself being unimpressive with a ma.s.s amount of small, low quality shelters that housed the army of demons, all of them full with even more sitting around fires outside the wall.

From an extremely far distance the four were using their extremely precise control of their auras to see the city.

Se: "I can feel it too now that you mention it... it is rising..."

CK: "I don't know what he's doing in there but while his power is indeed rising, it doesn't seem to be an easy process, neither does it seem to be a quick one."

De: "I am not as powerful as you two, I'm struggling in sensing his energy from this distance."

Na: "Neither can I, but the natural order in this dimension is as out of balance as ever, even more so than the last time I was here... looks like his aura is so powerful it can even distort the surrounding natural energy to this level..."

Seth, Dezrin and the Celestial King listened to Natu and could only sigh, they weren't as attuned to nature as he was but they trusted in what he said.

Se: "And you're saying he's more powerful than you are now?"

Slightly hesitating before she continued.

CK: "Yes, I would not lie to you. My power has been exhausted throughout these years whilst he has been resting. When Azu died I couldn't help but feel grief, this grief led me to make decisions with half a mind to them... needless to say under my rule my army dwindled whilst his acted on instict and destroyed over half of my army."

De: "Weren't your armies equal?"

CK: "Yes... but..."

The Celestial King looked down for a moment.

CK: "Only one of the armies were being led by a terrible leader..."

There was a moment of silence between them. Seth began to reach his hand out to comfort her but she spoke first.

CK: "With the demons working on their warriors instinct, whilst they had no plan I essentially served my Celestials to them, I regret everything I did during that time and when I had finally awoken from my grief, my army was already reduced to half its size."

Awkward tension began to fill the air as the most powerful one within them showed weakness. But, as if invigorated with new strength she spoke once more.

CK: "But this is it... I've halfed my army, he's halfed his and with the help of the three of you, we may be able to defeat him without Azu's reincarnation. We might be able to do it!"

The Celestial King looked at the three with expectant eyes, Seth smiled and put his thumb up with Natu following suit slowly after but Dezrin seemed to be sceptical about her claim, his eyes closed as he was lost in thought.

CK: "Dezrin?"

Dezrin thought about it more for a small time before opening his eyes.

De: "How exactly are you planning to defeat him without our leader? Because from what I'm hearing he has locked himself into a room to somehow increase his energy slowly, wouldn't it be more intelligent for you to do the same?"

CK: "What? But I'm already weaker than him now! Now may be our only ch"

De: "You've just confirmed it yourself, you're weaker than him already. From what I remember that demon is extremely prideful and will not accept losing a second time."

The Celestial King was agitated initially at Dezrin's idea but calmed down, she knew he was only doing this in everyone's best interests. After a slow exhale she returned to normal and asked Dezrin.

CK: "You're correct in that regard, but, what are you trying to say?"

De: "Well, from what I remember our leader managed to fight him essentially on his own as almost his equal and he was only around for a short time, taking into consideration we are all centuries old."

Seth and Natu still acted similarly to how they did when they were with Azu, so the mention of them being multiple centuries old was still a slightly uncomfortable idea for them.

Se: "So?"

De: "Well, I believe that the power he told us about is a power very quickly learned and utilised, whilst it seems to have infinite potential to reach a high level of power the speed at which that can be achieved has been proven by our leader to be quite fast."

Na: "I'm starting to see what you're getting at. You want us to wait for Sora to catch up before we start the attack?"

De: "Yes."

The Celestial King thought about it.

CK: "But wouldn't the speed of learning be specific to Azu?"

Dezrin showed a rare expression of puzzlement.

De: "That's the part of my theory that I am most unsure of, the only real evidence I can provide is that our leader told us that the power he holds chooses people of similar characteristic. Perhaps work ethic or the desire to grow stronger is a trait shared by all the holders..."

Dezrin stopped speaking and waited for a response. After a long while of all of them being silent he decided to give up on his own idea and spoke.

De: "This is my plan... but this doesn't mean your own is wrong! I am fully willing to a.s.sist you in your own but this is what I believe to be the best course of ac-"

His words were interrupted by a chuckle from the Celestial King, the small chuckle growing into a loud laughter.

Seth immediately gestured for her to be quiet and whispered to her.

Se: "SHHHHHH!!! What if we're found out?!?!?!?!"

The Celestial King slowly calmed down. Still recovering from her laughter she spoke.

CK: "Ahhh, I'm sorry I just couldn't help myself. To think I would ever see the day"

She smiled at Dezrin.

CK: "Where you would make a plan where a gamble was present, ultimately your plans always take everything into account but here you are..."

Dezrin was taken aback by this.

De: "Well... I couldn't know for sure..."

He scratched his head.

CK: "I will go along with your plan, if you've come up with this plan then it's had much more thought than I could have put in. Plus if you were pushed to make a gamble, it could only mean that a plan with a gamble, for you, was more desirable than a plan with everything taken into account."

Dezrin could only nod.

CK: "Well, it's settled then, but there is still an aspect of your plan that I don't know about."

De: "And what would that be?"

CK: "What's our time limit?"

De: "Well, that depends on how slowly that things power is rising, could you enlighten me?"

The Celestial King scanned the Demonic King's energy once more, this time taking a much more specific look into the growth.

CK: "Hmmmm... I'd say... he's reached his original level of energy when he fought Azu. How prepared do you think he wants to be?"

Dezrin thought about it.

De: "Well in all honesty, he knows that Sora is weak right now... so there's most likely another reason he's charging energy aside from the threat of our leader... and that would be-"

Na: "The possible retaliation of an entire plane."

Dezrin nodded.

De: "Precisely, although his servants have undoubtedly gathered much information on our plane it is unlikely that he knows the status of even half of the legends on the plane. He doesn't know if they, too, will retaliate when he tries to conquer the plane. He's also factoring in the fact that you're still alive."

Dezrin looked towards the Celestial King.

CK: "An all or nothing... figures... so what level of strength do you predict he'll want to reach before he invades?"

De: "Well, under threat of both Sora and you, as well as the unknown factor of the Legends he will most likely want to reach about double his current strength, and I think he'll stop at nothing in order to achieve that, how much years does that buy us?"

CK: "In all these centuries he's been healing... halving his army came about as an act of desperation... I'd say maybe... 100 years?"

Seth, Natu and Dezrin were shocked.

Se: "What?! That fast?!"

CK: "Yes, whilst he's powerful he's extremely lazy. Its likely that the only reason he's trying to power up is because he's angry that he's been beaten once before, his was extremely c.o.c.ky before Azu beat him but his talent exceeds even my own."

Se: "Why didn't you tell us this before?!"

CK: "Well not to be offensive to you but during the war when you were much weaker than you are now, your team wouldn't have listened to me anyway."

Seth couldn't find a way to argue back and shrugged.

CK: "And... I've already told you but after Azu died I wasn't exactly in the go-out-and-inform mood..."

Se: "Yeah... sorry..."

CK: "It's alright. But my point still stands, his talent exceeds mine and his current strength exceeds mine too, I'll be able to catch up to my original level of power and maybe halfway to double it in 100 years, we're really relying on Sora to catch up."

Na: "Yeah... but I believe! If he's anything like our leader, he'll do it in 50!"

Natu's optimism made the team chuckle. There was a short pause as they reminisced about their pasts.

Se: "There's somethin we've all been thinking bout in the back of our minds though, we can deny it for as long as we want."

CK: "Hm?"

De: "And what would that be?"

Se: "The hope of our leader fully reincarnating is impossible."

The team was taken aback by this, but deep down they all knew it was true.

Se: "Different holders different personalities, similar morals. That's all we really know about our leaders power and the best we'll be able to get is someone similar, he told us this back then. None of you have truly moved on have you?"

There was a moment of silence.

Na: "Well... it's not like you have eith-"

Se: "I never said I did, I'm just sayin we need to do it sooner rather than later."

Natu couldn't talk back, neither could Dezrin. The only one closest to moving on was the Celestial King.

CK: "I had to force myself to somewhat move on, but tell me, are you prepared?"

Seth was looking towards the tower with a dragon in the distance and chuckled.

Se: "Not even close, think I can let go of somethin like that? Azu had a fire in him, more than any of us he deserved to live and he didn't. I'm probably never gonna move on from a friend like that."
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Seth turned back towards the team.

Se: "But what we can do is keep his memory from dying, I'm going back with you to the Celestial Plane."

He looked towards the Celestial King.

Se: "Ima train up too, I couldn't even come close to fighting him back then, I ain't lettin that happen again."

Na: "What?! Don't you wanna go back to our leader?"

Se: "He'll be fine with Iona and Xion, you're coming with me."

Na: "What?!"

Se: "We're training up together, you're still weaker than me you know."

Na: "I never said I wasn't!"

Se: "Yeah well that's not gonna be good enough 100 years from now."

Seth's image flickered and reappeared right next to Natu and in one quick motion he picked Natu up and was holding him above one shoulder with a single arm.

Na: "Hey!!! I don't wanna train!!!"

Se: "Too bad."

Seth looked towards Dezrin.

Se: "What bout you Dezrin? You goin back or you comin with?"

Dezrin hesitated at the thought of leaving his sister alone but quickly made up his mind.

De: "I'll come with you, I need to get stronger too, we'll send a messenger to tell them about the details of our plan."

CK: "I'll handle that."

De: "Thank you."

Se: "Alright, we ready to go?"

Na: "No! I don''t wanna go! I don't wan-"

Before talking anymore the four disappeared with a flash of light, leaving the desolate wasteland in an instant.