The Bird and the Garden 3: The Final Adventure

Chapter 72: True Hell, Part Two

Mono nodded silently, turning her attention back to the Blood. Salem felt a certain nostalgia about her order to Mono. What she told Mono to do had been the exact thing the First Yin had told the First Vao to do. The Heroines ready themselves, and took a step forward. But the Blood's smirk grew, making them freeze. They were walking into a trap.

"... You think you have me cornered or something?" It snickered. "I've waited far too long for this. To have the chance to push him into being the perfect weapon, the perfect host so I can kill the Gods and usurp their thrones. I won't let you take it all away from me - I won't let you take away my godhood."

"You... You plan to turn on your creators...?" Saril stammered. The Blood chuckled.

"But of course. To control the fate of the world itself - who could turn down such a power? You have struggled for nothing. You will not save him. I will not allow it."

"Baloney," Sapphire growled. "It ends now-"

"Didn't I just say you haven't cornered me?"

Without warning the Blood pressed itself on the First Vao, its body vaporizing into a black cloud of evil, sentient mist. It flowed into the First Vao's eye socket, the murderer's Soul twitching.

Crack...

Crack.

They could only watch in horror as the First Vao lifted his head as his Soul began to crack, black Blood seeping from the wounds. Dripping from his nose, his mouth, his ears, and his eye socket. And finally his Scarlet eye glazed over, his face holding a death-like stillness as the Blood invaded his Soul. Mono shivered, nearly dropping her hammer.

"V-VAO!"

The silence was deafening. No one could move until his hand twitched, the First Vao beginning to rise. His cold hand wrapped around the handle of his cursed weapon, the same weapon he had used to wage war against fate itself, and pulled it from the ground. The blade gleamed in the light of the eclipse, the First Vao holding it over his head, his face unmoving. Salem felt her heart plummet as the stench of Blood began to grow stronger, the princess taking a step back.

"H... H-he..."

The Heroines readied themselves, the First Vao taking a single step forward, and then launching himself at them. His Soul was under the Blood's control; true to its word, it used him as a weapon, as a true host. The bloodstained blade of Grimm Demise crashed against Saril's fingernails as the arachne tried to defend herself and her friends, the sheer, monstrous weight throwing her off balance. Salem grabbed her spider-half, pulling her out of the way just in time. Where Saril had stood only moments ago, the First Vao blasted Blood from the ground in a violent eruption, the black veins beginning to snake their way down his body again.

He moved faster than they could even react, circling around them and leaping into the air, swinging his weapon and hurling an arc of Blood at the Heroes, forcing them to split apart. Jasper weaved a ball of fire and hurled it forward, but the First Vao lifted his hand. Before Jasper's magic could explode, eldritch tendrils burst from his palm and swallowed the fire whole, snuffing the flames out.

"B-Blood!? Where's his Darkness!?" The fairy screamed. She shrieked when Sapphire yanked her from the air, clutching her sister tight as the First Vao kicked the doll away, the Blood cackling hysterically from inside his Soul. Salem gasped as the ground begin to bubble beneath her feet, diving away just as the ashy ground split open into a deep set of jaws filled with teeth, seven tongues lashing out. The princess lifted her head, the realization she had made confirmed.