Back at the Club.
Now.
Selene’s delicate bare feet touched the polished hardwood of the dance floor before the first spell was ever exchanged. It started simply, with a few probing tendrils of shadow, striking from the boy’s flanks. A perfect counter would have been blades of light, but the boy’s Devil nature precluded such a spell, and instead shields of pure force, ringed by complex Enochian runes, interposed themselves between the young man and the attacking shadows.
Tendril after shadow tendril struck, increasing in frequency as Selene’s chest rose and fell with excitement, each tendril intercepted by an increasing number of glowing disks appearing simultaneously on the battlefield, and disappearing the instant they were no longer needed.
Eventually the tendrils became knives of shadow, inky black, with edges that promised swift impalement if ignored. They gathered in groups behind the dark sorceress, launching erratically at the general direction of their target, like shotgun flechettes fired by a madwoman. Gregory was a rock in the storm of blades, ignoring the projectiles whose trajectories did not intersect his own, and positioning meter-wide shields between himself and his assailant to catch the rest, angled perfectly to deflect the blades rather than block them.
“If that’s all you can do boy,” the older woman mocked as she gathered a mass of shadows in her hands with a wide expansive gesture, “This is going to be a short test.”
Selene brought her hands in close in front of her chest, the mass of darkness compressed into a baseball-sized sphere between her palms. This sphere of shadow was not just tangible darkness. It carried the faintest hint of rot and decay, the smell of a carcass in the hot sun, and the musty scent of a forgotten grave. With an almost dismissive flick of her right hand, she sent the mass careening toward the boy, the trajectory erratic and unpredictable, but heading unmistakably toward its target.
Gregory’s composure didn’t falter. His face never shifted from its earlier flat expression as a green bolt of living lightning flashed out from a runic circle on his palm, intercepting the mass as it approached, unraveling the darkness until it faded completely before reaching his body.
Selene laughed with unconcealed glee as three identical masses of shadow appeared circling her shoulders, and launched them one after the other, each a split second behind the others. More spheres appeared as quickly as they were launched, creating a machine-gun barrage of deadly black balls of necrosis, flung at speeds nearly too fast for the human eye to track.
Gregory began to dance. Twin blades of green energy, smelling of honey, fresh grass, and a newborn’s breath, appeared in his open palms, and swiftly blurred into motion. Each approaching sphere of death was intercepted by a graceful blade of life, and each intercepted sphere was cut in two at an impossibly perfect trajectory, causing the halves to split cleanly and sail past the young man.
Selene’s eyes lit up in anticipation, and twin blades of darkness grew from her own palms as she rushed forward to meet her opponent. The two exchanged blows frantically, each strike aimed to kill. The testing period was over, and both magicians rained blow after blow on their partner, strikes executed perfectly with no wasted movement, only for each movement to be deflected effortlessly by their opponent.
Suddenly, almost as if it was choreographed, both of the dancers leapt backward, putting a few meters of space between them. Selene’s full chest heaved as she stared down her opponent, though from effort or madness it was not apparent, as no other sign of strain was visible in her appearance.
Gregory’s face remained calm and composed, with only a slight tightness in his jaw muscles betraying his fatigue.
“I haven’t danced like this in centuries, my boy,” the woman said with a seductive purr, her allure only marred slightly by the light of madness in her eyes, “But you’re going to have to do more than just defend if you are hoping to defeat me.”
“Defeat you, madam?” Gregory questioned, “I’m just hoping to walk away from this with all of my limbs attached.”
Selene cackled with undisguised glee as she raised her hands like a conductor. The blades of darkness split into claws extending dangerously from her manicured fingers, and the scent of rotting flesh permeated the club. The many shadows cast on the floor, in corners, below tables and chairs, along railings and stairs near the dance floor, distended unnaturally as agonized moans began to rise from the floor.
With an almost deathly slowness, hundreds of mummified hands rose from the shadows, using the darkness as a portal into the building, and the hands began to pull withered cadavers from the depths of each shadow. Shuffling dead, jerking with unnatural puppeted motions, lurched toward Gregory with a deliberate and inevitable trajectory.
With a flourish, Selene rushed back in to attack, her corpse army only moments behind as she flashed forward to engage.
Gregory paused only long enough to intercept the incoming claws, and hundreds of small golden red circles appeared above his body. His dance slipped fully into the defensive, not bothering with feints or probing attacks as his spell took form. As Selene unleashed strike after strike Greg’s arms moved with unerring precision to intercept each one.
After an exchange of blows, just as the nearest walking cadaver shambled toward the young man, his spell manifested. Hundreds of flaming arrows, each aimed precisely, let out a deafening crack signifying an object breaking the sound barrier. A moment later, every single carcass fell to the ground, a perfectly burned hole in the center of each of their foreheads. The charred flesh swiftly spread outward, consuming each of the undead from the inside, leaving nothing but ash scattering in the calm breeze pushed by the club’s HVAC.
At the same time Selene, leapt back from her opponent, her claws crossed only inches from her face, as a single flaming bolt pushed against her guard. A few moments later Selene swept the blades forward with a flourish, and the bolt of flame vanished in the air.
“Well played boy, I haven’t danced like this in a millennium,” the woman groaned with orgasmic furor, as she drew her tongue slowly over her lips, touching a bead of sweat coming from her cheek, and a single lock of grey hair fell down across her cheek, “But I’m just getting started.”
“My Lady,” Gregory said with a slight waver of fatigue in his voice, “Don’t you think this is getting a bit excessive? I will admit I was a bit disrespectful when I arrived, and it seems we got off on the wrong foot. Maybe we could…”
Gregory couldn’t finish his statement, as the entire club seemed to erupt with shadows. What followed was too swift for a human eye to follow, and so chaotic as to defy description. The dance floor became an ever-shifting mass of light and shadows, flowing like static on a television screen. In the center of it all, Gregory abandoned his blades of life for thin needles of fire conjured at the speed of thought. Inside the chaos, Gregory danced, avoiding the strikes that he could safely avoid, and intercepting those that he could not, resulting in kaleidoscoping bursts of energy that threatened to consume the building around them. When he could neither dodge nor intercept, Gregory accepted the blow, turning his body just enough so that the damage would be superficial.
As the attacks continued to flow, Gregory’s body began to change. At first it was his eyes, going from pale grey to a deep glowing red. Next his teeth became more predatory, with long canines and pointed blades on each tooth. Soon after, two curled goat’s horns burst free from his forehead, followed by a scaled black spaded tail extending from his spine. The final change came as a massive pair of scaled reptilian wings emerged from his back, shredding the shirt he was wearing. Each feature seemed to add to Greg’s power, each brought out in a moment of desperation when it seemed like his current effort would not be enough.
Greg’s devil features were finally coming out, and they were not the cutesy little bat wings of the anime he watched. These were the features of a true devil. A biblical monster, created to serve as a counter to Yahweh's angelic hosts, a temptation for many of the god's favorite mortals, and a nightmare for the rest. Monster spawn of Lilith and the great Adversary, a race birthed to aid in Lucifer’s war against his father… rebellion and hatred made manifest.
But the battle was not one sided. Selene did not weather the same storm of attacks that Gregory did, but each strike she deflected, each flaming needle dodged, came only a hair’s breadth from marring her perfect olive skin. She could feel the heat of each flaming spear, the wind from each attack, and the power behind each deflected blow. Each avoided attack caused Selene’s already maddened eyes to grow wider, and her manic grin clenched harder and harder in an increasingly steel-like jaw, until the sound of her teeth grinding was audible under the cacophony of attacks.
Suddenly, there was a break in Selene’s barrage. The older woman, half her hair grey and frizzing, crows feet visible and dark bags forming under her eyes, telekinetically pulled a struggling young mutant bartender into her grasp from his hiding place in the back room. Soon the young bartender’s face twisted in pain, as the wrinkles on Selene’s face began to fade and the lustrous black returned to her hair.
Gregory, without pausing his attacks, weaved a quick spell teleporting the man to the hospital and breaking Selene’s hold on him. Three times this repeated, and each time the teleportation was more timely, until she couldn't even touch the fourth man to drain him. Selene laughed with pure unfiltered joy and went right back to her assault. Flinging projectiles at supersonic speeds at the struggling boy.
Just as quickly as everything started, the entire battle ceased. Selene stood across from her opponent, signs of age creeping across her face. Sweat glistened on her skin, her gasping breath now definitively from exertion instead of excitement, but her expression showed no sign that she was willing to end the battle.
Her partner stood tall on the opposite side of the dance floor, breathing heavily with exertion, with nicks and cuts on his face and exposed chest, tattered clothing, and a not small number of deep purple and green bruises visible on the exposed portions of his body.
“This! This is what I wanted!” Selene’s unhinged shriek dominated the surroundings, as the ground below the building began to shake, and plaster dust began to fall from the ceiling, “What do you say to one last dance boy? You wouldn’t want to leave a lady unsatisfied, now would you?”
Something was coming. The windows began to rattle and the lights in the room dimmed dangerously as the walls began to groan. A massive summoning circle composed of shadowy runes appeared on the empty dance floor. Gregory’s eyes suddenly locked on to his partner’s silhouette. He made a few quick and precise gestures, and suddenly the shaking stopped.
Selene stopped, looked askance at her dance partner with a look of complete disbelief, and… crossed her arms and pouted, looking like an extremely offended young girl.
“You cancelled my ritual as I was casting it, boy,” the older woman whined, “That’s cheating. It was supposed to be my last big spell, the climax of the whole dance. I was going to drain the lives of the mortals in a three-block radius and use it to power the summoning of a massive shadow demon prince… it was going to be glorious, driving you into a corner until you pulled off your inevitable heroic victory… or your equally heroic death… and you just… tweaked a couple of my runes and cancelled the spell!”
“To be fair madam,” the young man said apologetically, his voice deeper and changed with his transformation, while he reached up to scratch the back of his head, “There is no way I’m going to last much longer, and you did say it was the last dance…”
“No! It’s not fair!” Selene said as she stomped one of her delicate feet, “I want a do over.”
“Madam, as enjoyable as the dance has been,” his expression gently indulgent, as if he was chiding a beloved sister instead of an ancient life stealing mutant witch, “If we go any further you’ll be waltzing with a dead man. The time we spent was enjoyable, and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. I was hoping to be left alive so we could do it again some time.”
Selene nearly looked like she was about to press the issue, when the faintest tinkle of breaking glass could be heard in the tense atmosphere. Selene looked off at the side with an annoyed expression, recognizing some signal that the rest of the room appeared to be unaware of. She took a deep breath and pouted her bottom lip cutely as she released it, blowing the air upward toward her bangs, causing the black and grey locks to flutter.
“Fine, you’re no use to me dead, boy,” Selene said reluctantly as she gestured toward Shaw, currently suspended and forgotten a few feet above the dance floor, and tendrils of shadow wrapped around him, drawing him closer to the older woman, “Enjoy your new club, child, you’ve earned it. Your dancing better have improved by the time we meet again, or I just might decide to kill you after all.”
“Of course madam,” Gregory nodded solemnly as he bowed low to his partner, “It would be my honor to accompany you again, and I will strive to improve in the future, so you can feel as if your kindness has been rewarded.”
“Hmph,” Selene huffed as she created a gateway of shadows, “Come along Sebastian, I find myself to have worked up quite the appetite. You will do nicely as a snack.
“Oh, and Tessa,” the woman turned back up to the balcony, addressing the Pashtun woman standing stunned at the ferocity of the battle, “Tell Charles that he can cease his worrying, the boy should be sufficient for what we were discussing. Sebastian won’t be needed after all.”
The Pashtun woman gulped and nodded, as the ancient witch stepped unceremoniously through the inky portal, telekinetically dragging a struggling Shaw with her.
Gregory immediately collapsed to one knee as the portal winked out of existence, and Jean and Emma rushed to his side. Both of the women had separately moved to assist numerous times during the battle, and each time Greg had wordlessly motioned them away.
Before they could reach him, however, a high-pitched wail split the calm of the club, and the doorway shattered, flinging bits of metal and wood like shrapnel into the open floor. The young man was barely able to turn back to his assailant, before a blur of white and pink crashed into the young man’s frame, driving him back with bone breaking force into the walls of the club, pinning him helplessly against the newly cracked structure.
The wail sounded something like… “Greeeeeeeggggggyyyyy!”
A beach house near the far shores.
Near the end of time (but actually just a few minutes ago).
An old man in tinted shades with an amazing mustache clicked a remote, turning off a large flatscreen TV, as a short woman with black pigtails seated on a nearby couch let out a sigh of relief. She stood, turned to the Old Man, and gave a deep bow of thanks, similar to what is common in the Eastern nations.
“Thank you so much sir,” she said, every part of her bouncing chaotically as she stood straight once again with her hands demurely on her lap, “First for pulling me out of that place, and second for all you’ve done for my Greggy-chan. I was so worried about him, you wouldn’t believe it. If there is anything I can do for you in return…”
“That’s funny,” the Old Man interrupted with a chuckle, “The kid said the same thing to me. Don’t worry about it, live your life, enjoy your time. I’m just glad I could contribute a little to making him happy. He’s a good kid, and he’s got the right attitude. I think he’ll get along great here.”
“This is Fiona,” the Old Man gestured to a mature (but still amazingly gorgeous) red haired woman who appeared to the side, “She’s been watching the kid for me. I have a feeling that the two of you will get along great. She’ll show you where he’s at now.”
The Hellfire Club
A few minutes later
Auntie Fiona strolled into the Hellfire club through the broken front door. The place looked similar to how it appeared moments ago, with a shattered front door, an empty bar, and tables ready to be set up for customers… except… the bar was on the opposite side of the wall. None of the recent occupants were present. Oh, and all of the mirrors in the room were shattered and bleeding across all of the walls, like an Escher painting. Mirrors were encroaching on sections of the room that logically shouldn’t have them… like the floor, the ceiling, and several areas suspended in the air of the dance floor.
Instead of Greg, Jean, Emma, Tessa, or the pink and white blur that we now know was the Satan Class Devil Serafall Leviathan, two ageless-looking women sat sipping tea at a table that had been pulled into a corner of the room. The first was familiar. Selene Gallio sat calmly, none of the signs of aging from before present on her face, with the shriveled corpse of someone who used to be much larger discarded off to the side. The second woman was completely bald, dressed in yellow flowing monk robes, and had a sort of sexless look about her.
“Sorry girls,” Fiona said as she took a seat and poured herself some tea, “I was helping the Old Man with something. Did I miss anything important?”
“I was just asking Yao here what makes her so sure the boy can handle our upcoming problem,” she said, her earlier madness replaced completely with serene calm, “I can feel the bastard stirring in his sleep. We don’t have decades until he wakes, we have years.”
“Let me show you a little of what the Eye has been showing me lately,” Yao said with a knowing smirk as a piece of mirror detached itself from the wall and hung eye level for the chatting women, “This isn’t a definite future, just one of the many that I saw, but it’s a good example of what we can expect from the boy in the future.”
When Yao finished her statement, a scene started playing on the mirror, the cracks slightly distorting the vision. A massive hulk of a man in blue armor with Egyptian features stood facing a young man with red eyes, goat horns on his temples, and a massive pair of black wings. Signs of battle were visible all around the two, and the larger man rolled his shoulder, as if he was shaking off a light injury.
“The efforts of you and your concubines are commendable, Boy,” the large man’s voice boomed in a way that commanded attention, “But they are doomed to be futile. I am immortal. I am endless. I can adapt to anything you throw at me! I AM A GOD. YOU! CAN! NOT! KILL! ME!”
“Right,” the kid said, cocking his head to the left slightly, “You sound just like the big purple nutsack. It's amazing how similar you megalomaniacs are. I can't kill you, sure. I can do this though.”
The boy raised his hands and eighteen small runic circles formed a rough hexagon in front of him. Identical circles appeared in a straight line behind the armored giant, one behind the other, pointed vaguely toward the horizon. The giant was suddenly pulled backward. As he struck the first circle his speed accelerated, followed by another burst of speed as he hit the second circle. With each circle the man’s speed increased, until the final circle kicked him back so quickly that his silhouette rapidly shrank into a small dot and then unceremoniously vanished.
The young man turned around, looked right at his audience, smiled a bright smile and waved.
“Hello Auntie Yao, Hello Auntie Fiona,” the voice grew low, sultry and seductive as he winked directly at Selene and his face grew a flirtatious smirk, “And hello to you as well Madam Selene.
“That was escape velocity by the way… for the sun, not for the earth…” the boy easily slipped back into ‘professor Greg’ mode as he explained, “The first circle included a spell to remove air resistance, and the last circle included a semi-permanent space manipulation spell to lock off his teleportation for the next few decades. We shouldn’t be seeing him for quite a while. I miss you all dearly. The Girls all say hello.”
The scene shifted suddenly to a crowd of exhausted women, some familiar like Jean, Jess, Esme, Doreen, and Serafall. The others, unfamiliar but no less beautiful, were all waving with confused expressions.
“Anyway, great chat. You should all come over for drinks sometime when the timeline catches up, it’ll be smashing!”
The vision ended at this point, and Yao turned to her dark haired companion. She looked expectantly at the other woman, but said nothing as the old witch sat there in shock, seeing the easy defeat of her oldest ‘frenemy’.
“What a cheeky brat,” Selene said, her mouth and eyes open in surprise, but then a smile seemed to slowly infect her face as she mumbled under her breath, “He’s lucky he’s cute.”