“Choose!” The demon urged. It’s tone far more rushed and spiteful than the gemini’s. “Power beyond your imagination. Power that would make you supreme. Power that would allow you to take all you desire. Power… or each other.”

  Neither of them responded to the demon’s shrill words. And it laughed.

  “I can see your covetation.”

  It turned to Banda. “Would you not become king once more? Of this forest and the next. To be without equal. Always the hunter. Never the prey.”

  It turned to Eres. “Would you not at last be free to take fate into your own hands? Would the path to the throne not carve out of the ground before you?”

  It turned to them both. “The reward of betrayal is everything. The cost of being betrayed is everything.” A channel of iridescent mana surged between them without waiting for their response.

  There was nothing fundamental governing their choice. It was an an undeniable plain choice of two paths ahead. Power or the other.

  Light flowed through the channels and the surge ended. Banda raised his hand and wielded the dull gold coating of Armor as he gave it flames. To his side, Eres let the chaotic silver run over hers.

  Banda had never had someone by his side before. She frustrated him most of the time, but a part of him felt reluctant to cast her away.

  But more than that, he could not stand the faint sickening feeling that now surrounded him. Like that of a thousand hands of putrid mud pushing him to move as they wished.

  Banda would not stand that. He was king. He would walk where he wanted, the path he saw best fit.

  Eres beamed wide, for her fondness had been returned. She enjoyed adventuring with him, despite it struggles. All good stories had struggles.

  And more than that, she despised fate’s attempt to break them apart. It was poison masquerading as wine. Were she to betray him, she would be reviled in the eyes of fate. Forever the wretched villainess, just as Ishtar.

  Certainly, she could rise to the peak through that path, but why would she. She would ascend to power her own way, claim the throne on her own terms. She would not be herded down a straight path like cattle. She would have both power and all else she desired.

  “No…” The demon’s faces twisted in frustration. Banda and Eres’ eyes flicked up at its growing hostility. “No, no, no, no! You were to betray! All must betray!”

  The demon’s eye split open even more, as its form started to morph. A cascade of mana flooded the lair to a suffocating degree. No, it was something denser than mana.

  Banda felt himself overflow with the dense mana as it forced its way into his spirit. Instinctively, he meditated. He pushed the mana through his meridians which converted and purified the aura far faster than he ever had, and poured it into his soul.

  But it was not fast enough. More flooded in beyond what he could bare. As the strain threatened to tear him apart, he choose the only way he could think to survive.

  Banda gathered all the aura he could. He converted it into pure azure aura and saturated himself in it while expelling all else as he endured the flooding mana. He felt for his soul as the foundation, and ignited it.

  The power of his soul surged to the point he felt it might crumble before the demon’s mana could break it. But he kept his focus.

  Banda grabbed hold of the raging aura and forced it to condense within him. He pushed it down, all of it, and molded it into a ball at the base of his torso where his balance was most firm.

  He condensed it further, as small as it could, and held the shape firm. Its violent currents swirled at his control so that they would not crash against the shape of the sphere, but strengthen it instead against the mana outside.

  He held it there. Swirling, guiding, suppressing, intensifying. The sphere fought against him, but he held. He held and held and held until finally…

  Banda found himself in a pitch black land. Gentle ripples pulsed out over the surface of the dark water he stood on. Before him was himself, sat on a throne of skulls atop a pile of bones, with a cold unwavering gaze. The Inner Demon, just as the writing had said.

  The other him gave off a familiar and strange feeling. One he felt opposed to, and one he could not reject.

  “You disgust me.” Ensim spoke as coldly and callously as his gaze.

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  A clawed hand pierced Banda’s chest. Ensim had crossed the distance between them, and his instincts had not sensed it.

  “You are no king.”

  Banda ripped the hand out of him and mauled back in return. But Ensim effortlessly swiped it away and clawed deep down his torso.

  With the grievous wounds slowly robbing his life, Banda let the power of the Bull of Heaven taken over. With a heavy burst, he hounded after his inner demon, but Ensim avoided every blow with ease, and by no more than he had to.

  “Can you do nothing without that lowly beast?” Ensim said as Banda rampaged. “Where is your dignity?”

  Banda mauled down, but Ensim caught his arm clean. The horns of a bull grew from his head, but his hauntingly silver eyes retained full clarity. Banda mauled with his other arm, but Ensim caught that too.

  “Your instinct?”

  Ensim cracked Banda’s bones in his grip. Banda thrashed in pain and rage, but Ensim grabbed hold of his horns and broke them off.

  Banda’s consciousness returned as his Behemoth Form fell away to a shocked expression of disbelief. He was utterly outclassed by every measure. It confused him. How could he be so inferior to himself. What was different about them.

  “You need not concern yourself.” Ensim’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. “I alone will reign.”

  ---

  Eres stood before a throne in a court of golden wonder. Faceless corpses littered its marble floor, all bound in red strings.

  “Is this what you desire? An empty chair? Is that what freedom is worth?” The Inner Demon mocked her from the side. Its face was that of malicious delight, thought the callousness of its eyes betrayed its true thoughts.

  “How long will you dance around like some naive maiden? You know better than that, deep down. How many stories like yours end well?” How many maidens…” Her form suddenly morphed into Banda’s, though it retained its mocking sneer. “...take the throne.”

  The golden Chains of Heaven bound Eres is place as the fake Banda drifted around. “Did you really think you could change your destiny with these half measures? You are nothing but a damsel of fate.”

  The fake Banda shot his hand at her face, and Eres’ eyes shone white. Glimpses of the future filled her mind. A grand hall filled with faceless gods. Upon the throne, Banda sat assuredly, donning a horned crown. And Eres stood beside him with a calm smile.

  “Look.” Eres looked over to see her Inner Demon wearing her face again. “The natural end of your path. My, how content you are. How resigned. You cling to freedom like a child, but freedom will not save you.”

  “Discard it!” The Inner Demon dug its agonizing fingers into her flesh. “Dig your claws deeper into this world! Bend it to your will! Bind it! Dominate yourself and all around you!”

  The pain and the weight of the words fell heavy upon Eres. It tried to despair her. Suppress her. But her urge for dominance burned stronger.

  Eres raised her head and her tyranny burned everything away. The corpses, the chains, the palace, and even the Inner Demon. She did not desire to be saved. She desired to dance for all eternity.

  The Inner Demon smiled as it burned away. “We shall see how long you can endure.”

  Eres stared back coldly. She knew the nature of Inner Demons. She had contemplated and prepared herself to face hers, and yet it had still clawed at her weakness. She knew it were claw again, but that too was merely another struggle she would endure.

  ---

  Banda laid in the surface of the dark water in the pitch black land. Injured to near death, and exhausted to unconsciousness, he started to sink.

  Ensim started down over him with the same heartless gaze. He reached his clawed hand to push him further with the cold gaze of a king.

  Banda exploded with might beyond his limits. He burst at Ensim with tyrannical savagery. A reckless claw drew blood from Ensim’s flesh. The Inner Demon struck back, but Banda endured the blow and ripped off Ensim’s arm.

  He rampaged again, devolving further than he ever had into the ways of the forest. To its depths as he mauled away with utter abandon. He thought nothing of the consequences or rewards of victory, for he sought only victory itself.

  Banda’s frenzy came to a sudden halt, as Ensim was now the one lying in the water, succumbed to his overwhelming relentlessness. Though still, his gaze did not change.

  “Vermin.” Ensim spoke as he sank beneath the surface.

  White lightning struck Banda and Eres within the lair, and their aura exploded. The density of the mana of advancement rivaled that of the mana the demon was flooding it, though the Heavenly Tribulation was of far greater purity.

  Banda felt his core fully form and stabilize, and then fill with aura. The power of his soul surged fivefold, and his body and mind doubled in strength. His spirit overflowed with a vitalizing aura tenfold what it was before. And that aura felt as firm as a mountain.

  “No!” The demon’s wretched wail strained the world around her. The eye started to break out of the screaming gemini, taking the unfinished form of a snake woman as it tried to claw its hand at them.

  But Eres’ winged amulet floated up from her neck. They had acquired the gemini’s gift, and now had even advanced due to this great demon’s influence. She had no reason to let it remain.

  The amulet shone with celestial light that scalded the wretched entity. Eres did not target the being of incomprehensible might, but the gemini it possessed.

  “No! How can you have that?!” The demon exclaimed in fear and confusion. But Eres did not answer.

  The light of the amulet cracked the space around the demon and cast it back into the Abyss. Wailing and cursing, the great demon fell into the void, and the space snapped shut. The vestiges of the aether left behind were greedily absorbed into the winged amulet, which started to regain its luster.

  Eres smiled brightly at Banda. “Let’s finish this.”

  Without need for more words, they rushed outside to find Otto waiting in the plains of the mountain. Waiting behind a crowd a hundred strong with mindless eyes.

  “I didn’t expect you both.” He said with nonchalant amusement. “One of you would have had a chance.”