[A/N]: Alright, first goal of the week is 200 Power stones, so get to it!!
Selene stared up at the crystalline devil approaching with measured steps. Eight feet of death incarnate wearing blue crystal armor.
For the first time in millennia, genuine terror seized her ancient heart.
She'd survived the fall of Rome by drinking senators' blood, outlived the Black Death by feasting on plague victims and watched empires crumble to dust while she endured.
Because she was Selene, the Black Queen, an External.
But looking at this creature, this thing that had slaughtered her army without hesitation and turned hundreds of devoted sorcerers into dust with terrifying efficiency, she understood something fundamental.
Jay wasn't going to let her walk away.
He was going to end her permanently. In a way that even an External might not recover from.
And worse, he had the power to do it.
Her remaining hand scrabbled at the obsidian ground. Fingers found purchase in the blood pooling from her stumps. So much blood, specifically her blood, ancient and potent. Blood that had drunk from dragons and mystic creatures.
She'd sworn never to use this. Never to call on him, but the cost was too terrible and the price too high.
Eternal servitude to something worse than death.
But the alternative was oblivion.
And Selene had not survived for seventeen thousand years by choosing oblivion.
She began drawing symbols with her own blood. The movements were frantic and desperate. Geometric patterns that predated Christ and sigils that made the air recoil and reality flinch.
Jay saw the blood symbols taking shape. His danger sense exploded into cacophony so loud it made his ears ring. Every instinct screamed at him to stop her and end this before whatever she was summoning arrived.
"Oh, you think so?" His crystalline form blurred forward thirty feet in a heartbeat.
But he was too slow.
Selene's voice rose. Ancient words that hurt to hear and sounds human vocal cords shouldn't produce. Her blood glowed with dark power as the circle completed itself.
Jay was ten feet away when she screamed the final word.
"MEPHISTO!"
Time itself held its breath.
The world stopped.
Literally stopped.
The wind died mid-gust, the blood pool froze mid-ripple, and the dust of broken petrified sorcerers hung suspended in air.
Even Jay's momentum arrested mid-stride, his crystalline form locked in place.
Helpless and able to see and think, but not move.
The only thing that moved was Selene's belly.
It began to bulge. Swelling outward like something massive was trying to escape. The skin stretched, pulled taut, becoming translucent like rice paper. Veins stood out in stark relief, black and pulsing. The bulge grew larger and larger as her belly distended impossibly.
Selene's mouth opened in a silent scream. No sound emerged because time was frozen. But her face contorted in agony, and her eyes bulged and tendons stood out.
The shape pressing against the skin became clear.
Fingers- long and clawed. Then a hand and then an arm, its musculature wrong.
Then a fist, glowing red like living coal, punched through.
The skin tore and ripped like wet fabric. Black fluid poured out, thick and viscous, hissing where it touched ground. The smell hit even through frozen time.
Sulfur, rot and something worse.
The hand that emerged was red. Not blood red but pure crimson like the color of living flame and sin given form. The fingers ended in black claws that absorbed light.
The hand gripped the edges of the wound as the claws dug into Selene's flesh.
And pulled.
Selene's belly tore open like fabric. The sound was wet and visceral as black fluid poured out in a torrent, mixed with things that might have been organs and through the opening, a body emerged.
Naked at first. It was humanoid but wrong, its proportions slightly off, torso too long, lower limbs too reminding of hooves and muscles defined in ways that suggested inhuman strength.
The skin was that same deep crimson, gleaming like polished stone.
The being pulled itself free with casual strength.
Then it stood and stretched, like waking from a pleasant nap.
Then the body ignited.
Flames erupted across its surface, but they didn't burn. They danced, worshipped, and then they transmuted as they became clothing.
A suit materialized from fire itself. Perfectly tailored, deep red with black accents. The flames wove themselves into fabric. Into buttons and a pocket square that flickered with hellfire.
The being's head tilted back. Hair grew from nothing, long and black, falling past its shoulders in waves that moved too fluidly. Horns sprouted from the forehead, curving backwards, polished obsidian gleaming. A tail unfurled from the base of the spine, spaded at the tip.
The face was beautiful in a terrible way. Sharp features, high cheekbones and a mouth that smiled like it knew secrets that would drive mortals mad. Even its eyes were points of yellow light.
And time resumed.
Jay stumbled forward, his momentum returning. He caught himself, barely, as his mind struggled to comprehend what he had just seen as his danger sense screamed.
And standing before him, newly birthed from Selene's body, wearing a suit made of hellfire, was Mephisto.
The Lord of Hell.
The Devil himself.
He looked exactly like his comic book depictions. And somehow that made it worse.
The corruption from his presence hit Jay like a physical force.
The air itself became thick and cloying. Every breath tasted of sulfur and ash and something worse. Something that made his soul want to retreat.
This wasn't just evil. This was the thing that evil feared.
Jay felt it in his bones, in his blood and in the part of him that was still human despite the massacre he's done.
Fear. Pure, primal, absolute fear.
His hands trembled as his crystalline form flickered. His heart hammered against his ribs.
He'd faced gods, fought Asgardians and conversed with cosmic entities.
But this? This was different.
This was looking into the abyss and realizing the abyss was hungry, and it knew his name.
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