Nero and Adonis had arrived back to Paradis, confused and tired.

They had landed on the hill overlooking Crest Manor, or what was left of the hill overlooking Crest Manor. Their car was burnt to a crisp, the grass burnt, parts of it on fire, and the entirety of the estate was gone.

Small fires were around it, filtering through the gaps of the rubble. One could tell in which direction the blast came from, with the trees, the few that survived, toppled and leaning to the right.

Shaking and breathing hard, Nero told himself that maybe his son survived.

People survived the war on Altera and made it to Paradis? Why not him.

“Look,” Adonis said.

He pointed, and farther out, to the right, laid several strewn corpses, their charred remains smoldering in bits. Nero quickly turned away, and then shivered, looking at Adonis’s face.

All the scars were gone.

“Are you okay,” Adonis asked quietly.

“No.”

“Call Alto.”

Adonis crumpled to the ground and laid on his side, wheezing, his skin becoming paler, while Nero made a call.

“Miri, call Alto.”

The friendly, male robotic voice on his phone told him alrighty boss, the tone feeling inappropriate considering the circumstances.

Several beeps went off, and no call was made.

Again and again, several beeps, and then silence. There was no connection, and the petrifying silence was now replaced by visitors. The Empire had returned, their dark ships were almost invisible at night.

They were in formation, the largest ship followed by the smaller ones, which in turn had their own leaders, and they scattered off to various points in the city.

Descending, breaking the atmospheric shield, they easily entered Atlaan’s airspace after one, singular attack to stun them, decimating the south-eastern portion of the town, and the main part of Undertown Atlaan, where all the people of the sea lived.

Now, it was where they died.

I don’t sense your mother, nor my own, on any of those ships, but I do sense many other family members, Unas commented.

“Do you think we can win,” Nero asked.

Not if we don’t eat again soon. Both of you need blood.

Adonis groaned in disapproval at the idea of drinking blood to stay alive, but Nero had no issue with it.

“You need it. Please. I can’t handle having someone else die right now,” Nero pleaded.

“I’d rather swallow a bottle of iron pills,” Adonis replied.

“I can do that. I can do anything, okay?”

Nero dropped the sword to the ground, it grunted, and he squatted on the ground, mesmerized by Adonis’s new face, like a baby chicken imprinting onto a mother hen.

“Let’s find some blood and keep looking, okay,” Nero said.

Lying on his back, Adonis had a front-row seat to the gift they were given, dropped down from the heavens, slowly spinning, dark crimson and spherical.

It was blood.

It made its way over the city of Atlaan, and much to their dismay, it started with the area that was attacked first, Ascension Hills and the major part of Undertown Atlaan.

The orb swirled, pouring out, what seemed to be an infinite amount of fluid in the ocean, and then floating steadily over onto land. The water was now bright red, and many fish people, poisoned if they didn’t die before, floated to the top, their brown fish eyes open, razor-sharp teeth visible, mouths agape.

“Open your mouth,” Nero whispered to Adonis.

“I don’t want to,” he whimpered. “They call us all cannibals.”

“It's okay. It’s okay. Ssh.Shh.”

Adonis squeezed his mouth shut and screamed, loud, short screams, as there was nothing clean left about them, on the inside nor out. Screams and cries could be heard over the area, as the few that survived were drenched in the blood of those who were sucked dry, months prior.

Some residents stood still, and said nothing, letting it happen, remembering the exploding town on Earth, and waited for the body parts to fall, but that didn’t happen either.

Horror hung in the air as the sphere of blood hung. It stopped leaking over the southeastern part of town, but instead, it lobbed up and down, a beacon or marker of some sort.

“Why did they do this,” he asked himself.

“I know why,” Nero replied.

“Y-you do?”

“Yeah,” he grunted.

Licking his hands, twirling his tongue between the spaces of his fingers, sucking on his thumb, he explained to Adonis what happened as if he were chastising a child.

“We..they do this sometimes when it's time to visit. To remind all the colonies that they’re still like us,” Nero said. “It’s to shame you for leaving us...them...”

“We’re not monsters,” Adonis cried.

Squatting next to him, Nero coaxed him, softly, pushing more blood into his mouth, trying to get him to drink, but he refused.

“You need iron. It’s this or dirt, I’m too afraid to move you,” Nero said.

“Dirt.”

Every astral knew that if they were in trouble that the very little quantities of iron in the dirt would help...but only the most desperate would eat it, under the direst of circumstances.

A lot of people would eat dirt that night.

Nero sighed, rubbing more blood off his face and arms, licking his hands, and ignoring the moans of pleasure of his sword in the background. Pain, suffering, regret, remorse, and blood surrounded him.

For Unas, it was the summer festival and his birthday all rolled into one.

Nero wasn’t going to force-feed him dirt, but he would blood. He didn’t look at him as he did it, staring off into the distance, rubbing Adonis’s back, and telling him that only they would know.

It’s okay.

Most of the blood that he wiped off the upper part of his body that wasn’t ingested was starting to coagulate or freeze over from the cold. Some of Adonis’s wounds had healed fully, and this was proof that yes, the Empire was right.

He was just like them.

Finally able to sit up, the adrenaline wearing off, Adonis was ready to go home but worried there would be no home to go back to.

“We need to look for them in the—”

“ Stop," Adonis replied tersely.

“No! We need to look for them!”

Several, dark beams pulsed out from the main ship, sending a ripple across the ocean, heating it up, causing it to boil. The two men froze in place as more body parts lifted up to the surface and pieces of underwater buildings along with them.

The only thing left whole was a sign that said Rocks and More!

Beams pierced the air, quick and fast, at random spots in the ocean, shaking the ground, until finally, the Regalia Empire’s one-sided war with King Neptune had ended.

“What was that,” Adonis asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m really scared.”

He clutched Adonis’s shoulder, almost digging his nails into his skin as the water receded, farther away from the shoreline. Trash, corpses, and the broken entrances to Undertown Atlaan were visible as the ocean tides pulled back.

“They sucked all the water out,” Nero mumbled.

They waited, watching the waves slowly return, lapping on the beach, but somehow, different, slower, against their will, still wanting to recede deeper into the dark murky depths. All the ships in the area over Ascension Hills quickly left, and their red orb of death along with them when the waves abruptly went still.

“We need to go,” Adonis said.

“Why?”

“They left for a reason!”

They did.

A small wave came, pushing up against the beach, then another, but soon they increased in size and frequency, crashing against the protective barriers across the city. As the waves became bigger, they cracked, or the waves made it over, sweeping out more people to sea.

A soft noise, the sound of thunder and roaring waves began.

The rumbling led the charge, the sounds of their invisible chariot, pulling the final waves toward the town. They were dark and murky clouds of death, filled with trash, blood, and disease.

It swept away any single thing that might have survived the initial attack near the southeastern coast of Atlaan, water filling up the houses, crushing people underneath the water pressure if they didn’t drown.

A singular, giant wave smacked into the cliff that Crest Manor precariously perched on, and it crumbled. It slowly broke off, piece by piece, into the water. The final destruction of Nero’s prison, the place he always believed to be impenetrable, made him finally understand that he too was not invincible and that yes, they were gone.

“Everyone died,” he said.

Adonis didn’t hear him, the wind and bits of frost whipping around them too quickly as the intense forces of the waves pummeled the land. Adonis pointed to the sword, and Nero grabbed it, panicking, unable to comprehend what he needed to do.

The sword, screaming in his ear, shouted instructions.

Grab his arm. Leave area. Live.

He grabbed Adonis’s arm.

His eyes flickered black.

They left, just as another large wave pushed further inland, a trail of cars rolling along with it.

Nero wore one of his favorite sweaters, his green one, which was now a little tight on him, and his brown pants. Adonis had borrowed a simple pair of black shorts and a plain white shirt from Alto.

After they showered, they sat together, speaking quietly in one of the few guest rooms that were left free.

Alto did not ask about the others when they returned.

He assumed the bomb had killed them.

Nero and Adonis returned two hours prior, landing on one of the beds in the guest rooms, getting blood and soot all over it. They were more surprised that the house was still standing than that it was still occupied by their various employees, and more were streaming in.

Alto’s compound was at the edge of the jungle. With its high amount of security and rations and distance from a high-density area, it was the perfect place to be during a war. All his employees and their families that were still alive rushed over, and now the entire place was loud.

Everyone was running throughout the brown house, trying to claim rooms for themselves, others deciding to camp out in the basement, some just crying and others denying that invasion was occurring at all.

Alto was tired of yelling at people to calm down because it was impossible. He would yell at them to stop panicking, and then his yelling would make them panic, so he left to find his husband upstairs.

He found them, talking quietly together in the guest room closest to their bedroom, and shut the door, behind him.

Nero hated that he was dressed in his business casual, once again, as if he had somewhere to be when everyone died. He told Alto this earlier and he said nothing, knowing that it was only the trauma and he was the closest target.

He was always dramatic.

“Now that you’re...better...we can talk about the baby,” Alto said.

“He’s gone.”

“No, he’s not. Some creep took him when he came over to visit Rosaline. A boyfriend, possibly.”

Nero craned his head in Alto’s direction.

“You’re horrible.”

Again, used to his flair for the dramatic, Alto took out a photograph from his pocket, and gave it to Nero, who greedily snatched it, proof in front of him. It was Peter Forthright, walking out the front door with Amos in his pale yellow onesie.

“So, this is good, right? We can try and find him once this all dies down,” Adonis said.

“If he survived with whoever took him,” Alto clarified.

Nero inspected the picture, cocked his head to the side, and laughed nervously.

“Why do you, why is there a picture of this?”

“I record Rosaline because I pay the mortgage of the house she shits in.”

“ Did you record us at the penthouse, ” Adonis asked.

“If you’ve done nothing, there’s nothing to worry about,” Alto replied.

Neither of them said anything and Alto didn’t understand what the problem was.

“I found the baby. Why aren’t you happy,” he asked.

“Everyone still died. You don’t seem...too upset about it,” Nero mumbled.

“Azara and I knew that we would die early living like this. I was already prepared.”

Nero meekly nodded and Alto left, upset that he didn’t get any good-boy points for videotaping a woman inside her own house for the purpose of leverage and spinning it so that it was okay.

It would be okay in the end, because he found the baby, and now Nero could return him to Rosaline. Now Alto and Nero could go back to playing house, smashing their hips together whenever real conversation became too hard.

Except Nero didn’t want to.

“There is something deeply wrong with that man,” Adonis said.

“He didn’t care when I said his twin died.”

“Will he care if you die?”

“I mean, he saved me, right? He loves me. He said he wouldn’t let anyone take me because they don’t steal what’s his…”

Adonis rubbed his face, uncomfortable without a mask on, still remembering the pain searing across it from earlier. His words were muffled as he covered his face.

“I know you don’t understand how that’s wrong, but I’ll tell you after we find Amos,” he said.

“What’s wrong? He said I’m his!”

“Yeah. Yeah, you are. ”

Adonis announced he needed a drink if they were to leave again, off to find an infant that may or may not be alive.

He said it was the only way he could face the blood-drinkers and cannibals descending onto a town already buried under the weight of its own evils.