It was…

A child.

Or a teenager.

He looked like a thirteen year old boy, if not for the horns sprouting from his head and the wings on his back.

And he wore a suit. An actual suit. Not some medieval fantasy clothes, but a very fancy, very black, tailored business suit, with shoulder padding and all, a white shirt and a blood-red tie. At the bottom, a pair of freshly shined black shoes.

He looked down.

“An immaterium crystal? There won’t be any need for that.”

His voice sounded human, not like that of Gdol-Zayin or any other demon.

He kicked the crystal.

The white gem whizzed past Violetta’s head, even slicing a couple of pink hairs as it rocketed towards the cave wall behind her and lodged itself inside.

“Now then,” he said, turning to face the stunned master engineer. “You must be the artificer weapons expert cunt.” He took a step forward. “Which means the human trash failed. What a surprise.” And another step forward.

Every step he took seemed to increase the shaking we were feeling, like a finger flicking over a guitar string.

He sniffed the air. “A god touched, no less,” he said. “Wait.” He turned his head to look at me. “Two god touched.” He tilted his head. “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?”

He wore a leather eyepatch adorned with a skull over his right eye, which only farther made him look like a thirteen year old attempting cosplay.

But the look in the other eye, as human as it looked, that was not the look of a thirteen year old. There were hundreds of years behind that eye, if not more.

He turned back to Violetta. “Well, the divine dice really are in my favor today. Two for the price of one demon battalion.” He looked the girl over. “Yes. You would do nicely. I will enjoy corrupting and breaking you into my personal sex slave.”

I stood there and listened to this bastard talk.

Now, I was far from a stranger to bdsm, nor was I a puritan who would judge people for their kinks or for wanting to be subs or slaves.

But if there was one thing I wouldn’t stand for, it was for the taking of another’s agency without their consent.

I could feel it in every fiber of my being. The same thing I felt before I told Gdol-Zayin exactly what I thought about him, with many a colorful word.

The demon teen stopped.

“You get one shot,” he said to me, not even turning around. “And if whatever spell you’re preparing to cast right now doesn't kill me, I will tear your limbs apart and bring you with me to watch the slave breaking process, before I kill you right in front of her sex-crazed eyes.”

When a large, black, monstrously menacing demon like Gdol-Zayin threatened, it didn’t even come close to the sheer chill this child’s words projected as he spoke.

Only the voice of the goddess of love herself hit me harder than this being in front of us.

“Cast: Cutting Words!” my voice echoed through the cave.

“Bitch, you’re talking about breaking this woman when you’re not even tall enough to ride!”

The words left my mouth like a tidal wave, brushing all aside, and heading straight for this bastard's demonic ass.

The demon boy turned to look as the wave crashed into him.

The impact shook the cave, causing some rocks to fall from the walls and ceiling.

“Not bad,” the boy said, raising one of his hands, which seemed to tremble slightly. “I actually felt that one.”

That was while using Cast.

Supposedly an order of magnitude stronger than what made the last guy literally cough blood from the emotional damage.

This guy’s hand was slightly shaking.

He turned to fully face me. “Dismemberment and torture it is then.”

The demon boy stretch out his hand and something began to materialize out of the shadow it cast on the ground. The darkness soon began to fade to reveal a long, large, spiked mace. Long, as in the shaft was twice as long as the person wielding it, and large as in its spiked-ball-head was twice the size of my own head. Also on fire.

On fire and pointed right at me.

The weapon was razed for a strike.

I braced for death, even though he did plan to torture me first.

A shot rang out through the cave.

The boy looked at his wing. There was a smoking hole in it. He rolled his eyes and turned to Violetta.

The pink haired maiden was shaking, holding her last loaded pistol and aiming it straight at the mace-wielding teenager.

Said teenager simply held out his hand, asking her to hand the weapon over.

Another shot rang out.

This one would have hit the boy in the chest, but encountered a barrier that resembled the one that covered us in Pyra’s blessed pit (That was a terrible choice of words but is none the less accurate.), only of pure black instead of a shining light.

The bullet, lit with the kind of light the Knight Captain brandished, shone bright as it struggled to make its way through, burnt out and disintegrated.

The demon boy’s posture more adamantly demanded the weapon now. He stepped forward and took it from the girl’s shaking hands, examining it and finally putting it inside his suit-pants pocket.

He turned back to me.

It was time for me to feel what it was like to lose a limb.

“Now, where was—“ he began.

And then something burst through the waterfall and into the cave.

A literal ball of holy flame of a red-haired woman came crashing fist first into the suited demon boy.

The shockwave from the impact caused the whole cave to tremble, rocks falling and flying in every direction which I needed to dodge for my third life.

After things had settled, the demon boy was still standing, albite slightly farther away, brushing rubble off his suit.

“Yo,” Knight Captain Pyra said. “Been itching to meet you, Mr. Zereg-Atsum.”