seras sat on the ground, humming a soft lullaby. her tune wasn''t on eris'' level, but still. there was no denying that her voice was magical.

she gently stroked the red hair of her daughter as she slumbered after flying completely out of control.

seras was many things. but the thing she prided herself the most on was her duality.

fresh after a battle, her child needed her, and she hadn''t hesitate to sing to her. to quell her.

she was such a stark difference from the maniacal warrior who had lunged into a horde of demons and hacked them apart by the tens of dozens.

she was an enigma of a woman to observe. understanding her fully meant that you were not far from climbing the steps towards nirvana.

"it''s so amusing... our little girl is 8,000 years old already and she''s lived without throwing a tantrum all this time. but she does have her father''s rage after all."

bekka was standing nearby. she had been the one to actually lull thrudd to sleep.

"i can''t say i blame her. do you know what i would do if i found out that anyone had kept you all from me, and used your bodies to make trinkets..?"

seras didn''t need bekka to answer because she already knew what she would say.

nothing.

the whole of creation would be returned to a blank, empty, nothing.

entering a relationship with such uniquely powerful beings comes with it''s own set of unspoken understandings.

everyone in their marriage is aware that if anything were to happen to one of them, then an entire universe might very well go missing.

"i never expected her to care for behemoth that much. it truly warms my heart to see her coming out of her shell more." seras kissed thrudd on the top of the head.

bekka sat down beside her, giving their child her own kiss on the cheek.

thrudd stirred slightly.

her soft violet eyes fluttered open, and the first thing she felt was a reassuring presence holding onto her tightly.

"mom..?"

"don''t try to sit up yet, dear. take a few more minutes to get yourself settled." seras just really didn''t want to let her go.

thrudd tried to replay the events that led up to her losing control.

her mouth turned dry. an annoying sting assailed her eyes and her lip began to quiver.

"bastards... how could they do that to her..?" thrudd angrily wiped her face of tears.

seras and bekka came together in the moment to rest their hands on their emotional daughter.

"well... i did try to avoid making this unpleasant."

abaddon grabbed the demon forcefully by the head.

nearby, fiona was working with her people, cleaning up the debris from the destroyed village and helping the villagers finish packing their things.

that was when they heard it. a sound so dreadful that it bent their bodies over immediately and wracked every nerve in their body.

by enlarge, biblical demons are so used to pain that they don''t react to it. even the noises made when they are ''killed'' are like involuntary spasms.

a demon''s true scream of pain is unlike anything anyone has ever heard before.

it is a twisted howl that rends the ears and sends shivers down one''s very soul.

as abaddon held the demons head tightly, it wailed in agony.

only abaddon ignored the sound completely as he dug through the mind of the demon captive.

his brow crinkled. he could hardly see anything of significance.

lucifer had been very meticulous indeed. discover more content at empire

everything he saw within the demon''s mind felt like it was obscured by a wall of frosted glass. and since these were akin to pictures he did not take himself, abaddon''s all seeing eyes were of no real help here.

finally, he had a breakthrough. if it could even be called that.

abaddon could see three shadowy silhouettes standing with their back towards him.

they were obscured by the darkness of an over reaching shadow... or maybe it was two shadows? abaddon couldn''t tell.

just as he was getting a grasp of one picture, it changed entirely.

now, he saw a different scene of a man who''d been chained to a rock and surrounded by fire.

just like that, abaddon finally let the demon go, and the screaming subsequently stopped.

he let the lifeless demon fall back onto the ground with a thud.

now his hand was the one that trembled, and his eyes betrayed the inner turmoil inside his mind.

"n-no... they can''t have.."

"honey..?" audrina placed a hand on abaddon''s shoulder.

he looked at her but had no idea what to tell her. they might''ve had less time to set things right than they thought.

and there was a very real chance that lucifer may have already fucked things beyond repair.