Chapter Text
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil,
but by those who watch without doing anything.”
Albert Einstein
I’ll need more jobs, Nero thought as he adjusted his hold on the two paper bags full of groceries he was trying to carry in one arm. I didn’t realise two boys could eat this much, how the hell did our parents ever feed Credo and Kyrie and me without going bankrupt?
If someone had told him, a little over a year ago, that he’d be hunting demons for money, on top of taking care of two kids with Kyrie, he’d have laughed and probably proceeded to punch that person in the teeth.
I guess the joke’s on me now, he thought and smiled a little.
When the dust had settled from the Savior incident, Kyrie and Nero both wanted to distance themselves from the Order -- it had taken so much from them: peace of mind, family, safety. It had changed everything. But they weren’t prepared to abandon Fortuna itself. It was their home, the only home they had ever known. They found somewhere quiet to live in the outskirts of the city, a big old apartment with plenty of room, above a workshop that Nero fell in love with.
In the wake of Sanctus’ death, the Order had dissolved into smaller factions, circling like vultures over the organization’s carcass. Even those who wanted to renounce the Order entirely and just rebuild, or those who wanted to uphold the Order’s original ideals and redeem it, often came off as a little predatory. There were so many arguments and debates, including on how to deal with him and by extent, Kyrie. To some, they represented the old, corrupt Order. To others, they were rebels.
Nero didn’t want anything to do with any of them. He wasn’t turning away people who asked for help, but he didn’t get involved beyond doing what needed to be done and was fierce in keeping politics away from him and Kyrie, who felt the same. They had other things to worry about, like what to do with their lives. He’d set up shop as a professional demon hunter but there just wasn’t that much work coming his way. Nero believed that was simply because of his notoriety on Fortuna and that he wasn’t very well known outside of it, yet. Dante had sent him that gaudy neon sign to get him started, and although it annoyed him, sometimes people looking for Dante would wind up finding him instead. Kyrie wasn’t helping matters, refusing point blank to accept money as payment and only accepting food and necessities. Sometimes that bugged Nero a bit, who made what cash he could from side jobs as a handyman, mercenary and general runaround.
Kyrie herself, ever the gentle soul, made a point to keep in touch with those who, like her, wanted to rebuild for a better tomorrow, as cheesy as it sounded. That’s how she heard about Julio and Kyle. The boys, eight and six respectively, had both lost their families in the disaster. Julio’s family had lived practically across the street from them before the disaster and Kyle and Julio went to the same school. Being at school had been what spared them but they were left homeless and since the Savior incident, the orphanage hadn’t been rebuilt and nobody knew what to do with the boys. Kyrie didn’t want them getting passed around, and so swept in and brought them home with her; Nero was never going to say no to that.
Being taken in by Kyrie and Credo’s parents when he thought nobody would ever care had made him see that against all odds, there were always good people who did the right thing for its own sake. It hadn’t been perfect since he was never going to be an easy kid, but it had been good. And part of him wanted to pay that forward.
By now, he loved those kids and that’s what had him working himself ragged to make sure they had everything they needed. They were barely comfortable but that was good enough, at least for now. He’d gotten paid for some serious salvage work over the week and he’d gone straight to the store for necessities and even had enough left over for some little luxuries for everybody. Picturing their excitement brought a grin to his face.
They must have been expecting him because as he walked up to the house, groceries precariously in arm, the door next to the garage opened and the two boys burst out, grinning from ear to ear and ran up to him like eager puppies.
“Nero!! Nero! You’re back!”
“You’ve got so much stuff!”
“Did you get something for all of us?”
“Can we have it before dinner?”
“Pleeeeease?”
Nero chuckled, having to play some keepaway from the boys to make sure they didn’t knock anything out of his hands.
“Whoa, slow down boys,” he said with a grin. “Nice to know I’m being expected! But I’m afraid the petition for pre-dinner snacks is denied, you know Kyrie gets upset if you spoil your dinner.”
The boys both pouted in disappointment and Nero held out his arm, carefully hidden under a long sleeve and a glove, and ruffled Julio’s wheaten hair. “After all, dessert’s better after you’ve finished your vegetables!”
“So you’re gonna eat your veggies too?” Kyle asked innocently and Nero cleared his throat.
“Well… yeah!” he said quickly. “C’mon, let’s get inside and help Kyrie put all this away and get ready for dinner. I’ll--”
As he herded the boys back towards the door, there was a distant, hollow bwoom! like the bellow of a colossal beast and Nero whipped around, making sure he stood between the boys and whatever threat loomed on the horizon.
From where they stood, he had a clear view of the downtown area of Fortuna down the hill, still recovering from the Savior’s advance a year earlier. He only just caught a fiery blast flickering between buildings, then a plume of fire ballooning upwards, followed by a mushroom of smoke. Scanning the skyline quickly, he realised that the epicenter was the train station; it had survived the Savior and was more or less the lifeline of the island. Dark smoke was rising from where the blast happened. He gasped as a second blast went off, just down the street from the first. He shook himself out of his stun and immediately pushed the boys into the house.
“Alright guys, time to get to cover, like we practiced. Find Kyrie and--”
“Nero, what’s going on?”
Kyrie rushed into the hallway, in her apron, looking like a startled doe. She immediately draped her hands over the boys shoulders protectively and they clung to her, frightened. Nero dropped the groceries on the bench by the door and in the same fluid move snapped up Red Queen.
“I don’t know, blasts by the train station, looks like the docks are next. I’m gonna go check it out, stay here with the boys and don’t open the door to anyone!” Nero barked as he rushed outside.
He bolted down the hill towards the center as fast as his legs could carry him. He caught sight of people leaning out of windows to investigate and as he got closer, people fleeing in a panic ran the opposite way. He started to smell acrid ash as another blast occurred; he felt the shockwave hammering his chest and rattling the windows of the buildings and cars he passed. This close, he heard the rippling crackle of expanding gasses, and the tinkle of debris; he felt the ground under his feet rumble from the potency of it. A final aftershock shattered some windows as he ran past and knocked fleeing people down, most of them covered in dust and ash, stumbling away in a daze.
As he got to the scene, the air was thick with dust particles and smoke; fires roared up towards the sky in the wake of the blasts, their crackle and hiss mingling with the sound of sliding and dropping debris as the damaged buildings started to crumble into themselves. And then there were the victims.
Nero saw people, covered head to toe in dust and ash, standing stock still, mouths agape and eyes wide, paralysed from shock. Some pawed themselves in disbelief, many seemingly unaware of their injuries as they stumbled away. Others screamed incoherently, or babbled in panic; he heard struggling bodies of trapped and injured victims and the wails and choked breathing of the dying, all of it mixed with the roar of flames.
Then he felt it. It wasn’t demons, it was different. He felt the air ripple, like currents of hot air rushing past and saw the air near a building almost boil before a strange circle of arcane symbols rippled into being and after hanging there for a moment, caused a violent burst that shattered the facade of the building. It crumbled and started to fall, then suddenly the interior of the building ignited in a violent burst of flame that poured outwards, blasting through windows, doors and the cracks in the facade. The building went up in flames.
Nero cursed violently. Whatever it was he’d seen, it wasn’t natural. He went into high alert and his eyes darted around, trying to locate the source of this. His arm began to ache under the long sleeve and glove and Nero felt it pulsing, almost pulling him in a direction. He looked up along the roofs and noticed them. If the situation wasn’t so dire, he would’ve found it ironic; they were dressed in black robes with hoods pulled deep on their heads. Nero caught sight of them on the edge of a building’s roof, gazing at the last building to explode, then he saw them raise their arms and saw their lips moving. The air began to boil again, near the previous blast, where people were already trying to rescue victims.
“The hell you are…!” he growled and ran towards the building.
He jumped onto the top of a large truck, then off the side of the building and unleashed the Devil Bringer’s phantasmal arm to grab onto the edge of the roof and hurl himself up. He immediately grabbed his sword from his back and rushed them. He expected demons to reveal themselves under the hooded robes but the first one he struck was cut down almost instantly with a very human scream. The rest hesitated but one immediately made a strange gesture at him and Nero felt his sword arm go numb and his demonic arm flared. He managed to keep hold of the Red Queen and drew his gun suddenly, shooting that individual in the head. They went down instantly, blood and brain matter spattering on the ground.
Nero grit his teeth. The numbness passed and he rushed headlong into the remaining group, even as another explosion happened nearby and the fire raged. He cut all of them down unceremoniously, equally relieved to have stopped them and… disturbed that they appeared to be entirely human. He caught sight of one’s face under the hood, an old man; he looked terrified.
He had no time to ponder upon this, he scanned the other buildings around for any more of these people but fortunately, saw no more. He had a last look at the bodies, expecting them to maybe vanish but… nothing happened. The nearby roof access door finally slammed open and three heavily panting Holy Knights rushed out, stopping momentarily at the sight of him.
“I got them. I don’t know what the fuck they are, but they did something!” he snapped at them.
“We’ll see to them, then, get down and see if you can help anyone!” one of the knights replied and directed the other two to the bodies.
Nero didn’t care to stick around; he jumped down from the building after putting his sword away. It was pretty bad. For a moment he froze, a little overwhelmed by the sheer disaster. The large building of the station, with its elegant domed roof full of stained glass and careful ironwork, was cracked down the middle and had fallen inwards, down into the trains and people below. Somewhere a gas pipe had broken and Nero heard the hiss of the fire as it burned away. The fire was spreading to nearby buildings and looked like a grim beast slowly trudging down the road towards the docks.
Someone bumping into him shook Nero out of his daze and he immediately dove into the disaster to help. This wasn’t going to be a day of any more reckless heroics, even though he could still feel a bit of lingering powers dancing through the air, dissipating slowly. He pulled a woman free of some debris and half-carried her to the waiting arms of other people who were trying to help evacuate. Her head and shoulders were covered in blood and she seemed only half-conscious. He kept going back and forth, looking for anyone he could possibly help. Around him, others were precariously scaling over debris, calling for survivors and trying to dig through the debris with their bare hands. The fire brigade struggled its way through the damaged streets to try and get to the fire and anyone they could rescue. Nero even saw soldiers of the Order tossing aside their weapons and diving in to help and for once, he was happy to see them. The effort slowly began to get more organised as fire brigade and Order officers showed up to help.
He caught sight of a tall, lanky figure struggling along with the aid of a cane, barking orders and pushing Order soldiers to the front, whilst trying to keep citizens from venturing too close to the disaster zone. His voice was starting to crack and he suddenly dropped his cane and dove to catch an elderly man who fainted and almost faceplanted into the ground. He eased the old man into the ground and shouted for water and for someone to help evacuate him.
Nero turned away and continued to dig through debris for anyone he could help. He was tempted so many times to use his demonic arm to help but considering the panic surrounding him and the instability of the debris, he was concerned it’d do more harm than good. As he searched, he spotted someone’s arm sticking out of the debris and furiously began to call to them while pulling aside chunks of masonry. He heard the loud groan of metal being stressed but ignored it, confident he could pull the victim out in time.
Suddenly he was showered with a precipitation of dust and heard the crackle of stone; someone grabbed his arm tight and pulled him backwards. He was yanked out of the way as a large chunk of cracked masonry and twisted steel crashed down from high above with a deafening crack, the shockwave knocking further debris down onto it, including several jagged rebars that speared into the ground with shattering snaps.
“They were already dead. Don’t worry about them. Go help the living,” a woman said sharply, and let him go.
Nero choked out a cough from the dust that was kicked up and turned to face his savior. He looked around, surrounded by people rushing back and forth, some carrying or helping survivors. His eyes darted back and forth and he spotted the back of a red-haired woman as she slung someone’s arm over her shoulders and walked them towards a waiting paramedic, but they vanished in the crowd as someone pushed past Nero with a fire hose.
He tore away to resume trying to help as he heard some of the Order soldiers yell they found someone alive.
It was early the next morning, maybe close to 5 in the morning, when Nero found himself sitting heavily on the doorstep of his home and dropped his face in his hands. He was exhausted, physically and mentally. He hadn’t stopped working the whole night long, helping dig people out, helping put out the fires however he could. He only stopped when they began finding more bodies than survivors. He had thought himself used to the sight of bodies and gore but all the people crushed to death, dismembered or burned so much they barely looked human had still rattled him. Battle with demons simply doesn’t prepare you for the sheer horror of this kind of disaster. There is no malice, no enemy to be defeated; just faceless misfortune with no one to blame.
He looked up and saw smoke still rising from the site, even hours later. It’d taken a long time to get the fires under control; they were feeding off the gas pipes running under the station and the fuel of the trains. He shuddered to remember the choking smell of fuel and burned bodies.
He was covered in grime; soot, dust, his sweat and blood had formed an awful paste over him but he couldn’t bring himself to go inside just yet. His hands were still shaking and he just sat there, on the doorstep, arms draped on his knees and staring at his feet, trying to process everything. After the Savior disaster, Fortuna was just starting to heal, people were rebuilding and trying to move on with their lives. This incident had ripped the stitches out of a still fresh wound and Nero had a hard time not looking back at the disaster.
“Nero…?”
He looked up. The door opened behind him and he stood up as Kyrie, wrapped in a shawl, stood there, looking anxious.
“Kyrie--sorry, I’m--”
“Are you alright?” she asked and made to hug him but he gently kept her at arm’s length.
“No, no, I’m filthy,” he blurted. “I’m sorry, angel, I just got back.”
Kyrie tightened her grip on her shawl and bit her lip. She looked exhausted too, and from the bags under her eyes he could tell she hadn’t slept at all. “I was listening to the radio. It sounds awful… I wanted to come help but Julio and Kyle heard about what happened and were starting to panic. It was all I could do to calm them down and get them to bed.”
Nero grimaced. It couldn’t have been easy on either Kyrie or the boys. They had known the horror of the Savior’s rampage through Fortuna and were all too familiar with the losses and the disaster. This fresh catastrophe had no doubt woken up frightful memories for them too.
“I’m glad you didn’t come. It was really bad,” he said and reached out and took her hand in his, after ineffectually wiping it on his thigh. “The whole station came down and the fire spread down the road towards the docks. There were… a lot of casualties. I think there’ll be more,” he said, staring vaguely at the floor.
“Oh Nero…” Kyrie said and reached up and touched his cheek. “You did all you could. Don’t blame yourself.”
He said nothing and just leaned into her touch, thoughtful. He didn’t want to tell her about the figures he’d seen or what they’d done. He hadn’t stopped thinking about them since he cut them down. Then he perked up when he heard footsteps from the road behind them. Kyrie leaned to look around him as he turned around. A lanky man was coming up the road, leaning on a walking stick and stooping to hold the hand of a little boy who couldn’t have been older than six years old. Both of them were covered in grime much like Nero was, although someone had taken care to wipe the little boy’s face, but you could still see the streaks of tears.
“Isn’t that Captain Justus?” Kyrie said.
“It is,” Nero said and he suddenly remembered he’d seen him down at the site of the accident and finally connected the name to the man.
Justus was the High Magistrate -- anywhere else in the world he’d be called a chief of police. Since the Order handled all the military aspects of the island, the police force of Fortuna was little more than a branch of Order’s forces and after Credo’s death, Justus was effectively one of the most senior officers to survive the Savior incident.
He was in his early forties, tall and slender with nervous strength but walked with a slight stoop and a very noticeable limp that necessitated the simple black cane topped with a bounding steel hound. He had shaggy brown hair peppered with gray, tied back hastily, and brown eyes like a hawk, emphasized by his aquiline nose. His uniform was smeared all over with dirt and dried blood and soot and he looked exhausted.
Usually cautious of the Order’s members, Nero relaxed a little bit; Justus was a reasonable, if strict man and in the wake of the Savior, did his best to keep order in Fortuna. As far as Nero knew, he didn’t care for politics even before the disaster.
“Captain Justus, you look terrible--” Kyrie blurted and stepped forward. “Oh no, don’t worry, it’s okay, you’re safe now…”
Kyrie knelt down in front of the boy, who began to cry woefully as soon he saw her and leaned into her arms with little hesitation as she wrapped her shawl around him.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Justus said, his voice hoarse from barking orders all night and he cleared his throat. “This is Carlo. I’m afraid he… he lost both his parents today. I don’t know where else to take him, things are rather chaotic. I didn’t want him being passed around like luggage.”
“No, it’s alright!” Kyrie said, rubbing the child’s back soothingly. “I can’t imagine how crazy things must be. He can stay with us until things calm down and then we’ll see.”
“Yeah, we’ve got room in the house, he’ll be okay,” Nero added, frowning as Kyrie hugged the crying child and looked on the verge of tearing up herself. “Kyrie, you should get him inside, it’s pretty cold and he looks like he needs sleep.”
“Yes,” she agreed and easily picked the child up, who clung to her and kept crying on her shoulder. “I think some warm milk and a warm bath will help him calm down. Don’t worry Carlo, I’ve got you. You’re safe now, sweetie…”
She walked back inside, turning back to smile tiredly at Nero who nodded with an encouraging smile.
“Thank you, I really didn’t know what to do for the poor kid,” Justus said, and offered his hand to Nero. “I saw you at the site, Nero, you worked until morning. I wish we’d met again under better circumstances.”
Nero smiled awkwardly and shook his hand, his Devil Bringer arm still concealed. The moment he touched Justus he felt a tingle down his spine and he fought his body’s urge to go wire tense. Justus appeared to hesitate for a moment in the handshake, but in the end they both let go.
“It’s been… what, seven years? No, closer to eight. Just before your induction, I think,” Justus said with a crooked smile. “What was it… oh yes, vandalism. You threw rotten eggs at someone’s doorstep and smashed a window. One of the Order’s officers; they gave Kyrie and Credo a hard time, didn't they?” he said, almost fondly.
Nero couldn’t help the smirk. “Yeah, he was a real jerk,” he said. “To be fair, the window was an accident and you talked the officer into not pressing charges. You gave me an earful when you walked me home and told Credo everything. I thought you were gonna cane my ass the whole time.”
“It wasn’t my right to discipline you,” Justus said and shook his head. “You were too young for the niceties of military discipline. But Credo dragged you into the ranks to keep you out of trouble, or so I’m told. I don’t suppose it really took,” he added and chuckled.
“Yeah, and then he ended up outranking that jerk and demoting him after he screwed up big,” Nero said, smiling. “You were...pretty fair, to be honest. More than most people.”
Justus’ smile faded. “The kind of praise I hate to get. It’s a pity things turned out the way they did last year,” he said bitterly. “And now this…”
“Sanctus screwed us all over,” Nero said spitefully and his face hardened. “I thought it’d be easy to blame the Order but I’d be dumb to ignore that a lot of the people in the Order got screwed too.”
“I blame myself for not seeing what was happening,” Justus said and shook his head. “Though I never had any influence-- certainly not on Sanctus and his inner circle… I wish I’d done something.”
Nero gambled with his next line. “You went through the Ascension, though. Just like Credo and Agnus and him. I thought that was proof of membership.”
Justus looked startled for a moment, then smiled softly and bitterly. “Well, there’s no point in hiding it,” he admitted quietly. “For all the good it did me. No, I wasn’t part of the inner circle. Too unimportant in the long run and proof it wasn’t infallible. I’m not sure, but I think I was one of the first to go through the procedure. Now I wish I’d never bothered.”
Nero scowled, a little distrustfully. “Why’d you do it?”
Justus patted his lame leg, noticeably more feeble than the other, the knee and foot twisted to an awkward angle. He tried to stand up straighter but the stoop in his posture remained. “Couldn’t live with the fact I was crippled after my… accident. I was young and cocky too, once; a big operation ended poorly and that was the end of my career as a Holy Knight. Sometimes I think it would’ve been better if I’d just died out there.”
He leaned onto his cane, fingers gripping the top with something like anger. “Agnus promised the procedure would fix me. He told me it was experimental but I was desperate. I didn’t care for the risks and of course, it blew up in my face.”
He nodded towards Nero’s arm. “I’m sure you can tell I’m profoundly weak, for someone granted the power of demons. I’m a joke, crippled and I can barely hold on to any demonic form for longer than a few minutes. Agnus certainly felt I was a failure.”
Nero frowned. Justus’ frankness was kind of disarming. “You got handed a raw deal,” he admitted. “I didn’t think that was the case given-- well… given the talk.”
Justus laughed sharply. “You know, sometimes I really do forget that my parentage is hardly a secret. Everyone knows, they’re just too polite to bring it up. Sometimes I can allow myself to forget about it,” he said bitterly.
“Is it true?” Nero asked bluntly.
Justus’ smirk was pretty savage. “If you were in my shoes, would you admit that your father was a monster, happy to tread on the literal bodies of his people for power?”
Nero had to admit that he had no good response for that. “Yeah, I guess not,” he said awkwardly.
Justus chuckled. “Don’t worry, I don’t care. I was far beneath Sanctus’ notice and he was beneath mine. As far as I’m concerned, you did us all a favor to kill him. In retrospect, perhaps I ought to have paid more attention to what he was like.”
“So… any idea what happened today? What were the blasts?” Nero said quickly, to change the subject.
Justus complied with the shift and even seemed to appreciate it. He shuffled a bit to lean against a crate of scrap Nero had gathered in hopes of using them for something. “Well… as far as the general populace is concerned, this was a gas leak that was set off by an errant spark. More aftermath of the Savior incident, like so much other damage we’re only now discovering. But… I think you already know that’s not what really happened there today.”
Nero scowled. “Yeah. Those figures in hoods. They did something. I don’t really know what it was, it felt like… magic, I guess. But it wasn’t anything demonic-- didn’t feel like it was.”
Justus nodded grimly, looking troubled. “My men and I have enough evidence that what you saw and dispatched were witches. ”
Nero blinked. “Witches…? I haven’t heard that word since basic training.”
“I expected that,” Justus said sympathetically. “Most knights are pushed into understanding and combating demons first and foremost. Choosing to deal with their human allies is another division entirely. My division,” he added, grimly.
Nero frowned. “You’re the High Magistrate. The Fortuna police deals with witches?”
“Oh no,” Justus chuckled. “I suppose it’s pointless to keep the secrecy going. I'm a High Magistrate only on paper. I just sign off here and there, the actual policing is in much more capable hands. I lead the Javelin Division; we operate covertly, given the nature of our enemy. We’re the witch hunters.”
“This is the first I ever hear about this division,” Nero said and his frown persisted. “What, are attacks like these so common?”
Justus’ face turned serious. “Unlike demons, witches are a much more insidious threat. They don’t operate in the open like demons do and because they’re human, they can have agents anywhere. Like today, for instance. We’ve had to resort to their sort of duplicity over the years to deal with them. We were actually tracking the presence of some witches in Fortuna but as you see… today they forced our hand.”
Nero scratched his head, still taken aback. “I didn’t realise witches were such a big problem.”
“They can be, when they want to,” Justus said with a nod. “Usually their kind is content to hide and strike their little deals with demons and most really don’t care to draw attention to themselves… but some covens are either too ambitious, or too petty.”
“Like today, I bet. Why would they attack us?”
“Among the many sins of the Order was the execution of several witches of a certain coven, some years ago,” Justus said grimly. “From Amaro, mainland Italy. They had agents embedded among the populace, both here and in certain other locales of interest. They were openly consorting with demons, so of course they posed a threat -- in fact, they had several deaths on their hands. We disrupted their operations and put them to death as we would any other demon.”
“So… what, this was revenge? Why’d they do it now?” Nero said, tightening his fists angrily. “Their idea of getting back at us is to blow up the city?!”
Justus’ gaze was sharp but he maintained a cool demeanor. “They’re clearly exploiting the fact we’re still reeling from the Savior crisis. They figured out the Javelin Division took a major hit and think they can act unimpeded. Obviously, this has made it all the more personal for me.”
Thinking of all the victims he witnessed at the scene of the blasts and the notion that this was done out of spite, by some duplicitous humans who were happy to throw their lot in with demons, made Nero angrier than he thought he’d be. They were just like Sanctus and Agnus, they didn’t care about who paid the price!
“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked, gritting his teeth.
Justus looked at him very seriously. “On the one hand, my responsibility is Fortuna’s safety first and foremost,” he said. “Especially now.”
“I’m sensing a but,” Nero said, folding his arms.
“I doubt the coven will stop at this. Witches are spiteful and hold on to grudges like no other. So, strategically, our best option is to counter-attack the coven, round up the instigators and eliminate them to nip things in the bud.” He leaned back a little and stared at the steel hound topping his cane. “I don’t say this lightly, of course. They are still humans, but they’ve made it quite clear they are the enemy.”
“You actually know where these witches are?”
“Yes. If we eliminate their leaders and base of power, they will fall apart and we can always round up the rest later,” Justus said grimly. “That’s the second reason I’m here. I intend to take the fight to them and I could use another sword that I can trust. If these witches are so involved with demons as I fear they are, then we just don’t have the numbers. I know I have no right to ask, but do you want to join us?”
Nero frowned and actually started to pace a little. On the one hand, this was completely fresh news to him. Witches? A division of the Order he’d never so much as heard of? On the other hand, he had seen them with his own eyes, and stood in the middle of that carnage. Any way he turned it over in his head, it really was an attack. If witches could wreak such devastation undetected, what was stopping them from doing it again? Fortuna couldn’t take another disaster like the Savior incident.
He thought of Kyrie and the boys. They shouldn’t have to live through that sort of trauma again. Carlo just lost his parents today. How many more kids would have to go through that?
After all, maybe it wasn’t such a terrible idea to keep an eye on this division, just to make sure it didn’t turn out like Sanctus…
Nero set his jaw. He made a show of sighing grandly. “Sounds like you guys are gonna have it rough if I don’t,” he said and smirked. “Can’t say I’d turn down the opportunity to one up the Order yet again. Alright, consider me volunteered.”
Justus was taken aback by his attitude but then he barked out a loud laugh and shook his head. “You know, I can’t even say you’re wrong. Thank you, I feel more secure in my decision to go through with this now.”
“Sure, I just hope you have some kind of plan because I’m not gonna just waltz into a den of witches without knowing what to expect,” Nero said.
“Obviously. To be frank… this coven has made enemies even among witches,” Justus said, standing up again slowly. “To the point where a couple have decided to work with us. They’ve helped us develop some methods to counter their tricks.”
Nero’s eyebrow bowed up. “You sure you can trust them?” he asked, suspicious. “Bunch of them did just attack.”
Now Justus smirked, a little angrily. “Trust witches? Only fools would. But I trust the hate they have for the Amaro coven. I keep them on a tight leash, and they know what’s waiting for them if they try to cross us,” he said and his look turned cold.
Nero wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that and just frowned, but then Justus’ brow relaxed. “I know it’s probably a bit much, but I ask you to trust me,” he said. “I’ll deal with the witches, that’s been my job for the last decade and a half. You’ll only need to worry about the demons the coven will no doubt send after us when we show up. Now… it’s been a frightfully long day for both of us and I think we’d both benefit from some proper sleep.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Nero said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We can talk more tomorrow or something. I don’t know when you’re planning to start this.”
“As soon as we’re able,” Justus said, offering his hand for a parting handshake. “The less time we give the Amaro coven to prepare, the safer we’ll be.”
This time Nero shook his hand without hesitation and appreciated the firm and warm grip.