NOVEL NEXT Alice from the Underworld
Venelana Gremory, wife of the lord of the Gremory clan and mother of the crimson Lucifer wasn't kind.
She knew it without a doubt. She knew without a doubt that she was evil and she accepted it. That was her nature and nothing would change it. She had tried for Zeoticus and failed. The only thing she had been able to do was to hide it.
She knew the universal truth that many tried to ignore, veil their faces from. How could she not when she was the daughter of the Archdaemon Bael himself?
Power was the only thing that mattered.
Power was the reason why she still stood to this day. Power was the reason why she was still alive. Power was the reason why she had been able to meet her husband. Power was what changed the world.
Kindness in itself was a weakness and the world was cruel to what it saw as a weakness. Only the strong could allow themselves to be kind.
How could you be kind when you knew weakness meant the death of your children? How could you be kind when you knew it could allow Death to steal away from you everything you cared about?
Zeoticus didn't understand. Zeoticus was the only child of a demigod and a demon who had inherited from both his parents. Zeoticus was kind because he had been everything his mother had wished him to be at his birth. Zeoticus was kind because he had never been weak when Venelana had to fight and scrap for everything she had.
She had to fight under the commands of her father and with her own army when she proved herself worthy against the angels and enemies of their race.
Each mistake she had made was one where something dear was taken from her. She had seen with her own eyes how weak she was, how scary this world was.
This is why when she had looked a thousand years ago at the sleeping form of a newborn Sirzechs in her husband’s arms, she had promised herself to do anything possible so that Zeoticus and Sirzechs would always have the choice of being kind.
She killed hundreds of thousands with her bare hands and erased millions with her power of destruction. She only left ruin behind so that none of her actions would come back in the future to impact negatively her family.
She had been harsh with Sirzechs she knew. Zeoticus had been against it but he didn't understand. She trained and broke her son. She made her baby bleed and cry. She chose to hurt him. It was better for her to be personally hurting her child than for someone else to do it in the future.
She allowed him to be married to Serafall to bring into the fold the might of the Sitri clan even though she knew Sirzechs didn't love Serafall.
“Please, not anymore,” a begging voice brought her out of her thoughts. She was truly losing her touch, losing herself in her thoughts like this. She was doing something before losing herself in her mind.
Her gaze focused on the author of the voice. She had black hair and blue eyes. She looked pretty enough Venelana supposed at least for a human, pretty enough to attract the attention of Zeoticus.
One of her arms was broken, sitting in a direction a human one shouldn't, courtesy of the crowbar Venelana was holding.
“Why are you doing this?” the human girl wailed almost giving the Bael an aneurysm. Did they always have to scream? A broken arm was nothing. Venelana hadn't cried when one of her eyes had been plucked out of her face by a fallen angel when she was younger.
“You know, I don’t like doing this,” Venelana admitted. It was more of a formality than anything. There was nothing else she wished she would be actually doing other than being at the side of her husband but she couldn't for now.
“So don't do it!” begged the girl. “It doesn't have to continue. I am pregnant. Please!”
Another sigh escaped from the lips of Venelana. Of course, she had to say that. Venelana moved her crowbar slowly for her but a blur for most and let it crash against the stomach of the girl, where Venelana knew the child was.
The only reason the girl didn't die immediately was because Venelana didn't wish so, her magic following her will and making the girl live longer.
The girl had one of the sides of her face on the ground. She was moaning in pain and one of her hands stayed where Venelana struck, where she knew the baby had been, a babe that was probably now dead like many of its half-human siblings.
Venelana sat. Space contorted behind her, shaping, changing matter to materialize a throne made of gold. Anything else would be a disservice to her person.
Her gaze met with the broken one of the woman before her. Many would have felt pity and sympathy. Maybe some devils would have to. Venelana couldn’t.
“The dead child you bear in your stomach is the spawn of my husband,” The Gremory Matriarch spoke.
“I didn't know,” the girl whispered. “I didn't know he had a wife. Please, you already took the life of my baby. Let me leave.”
“You misunderstand,” Venelana spoke. “I don’t care about the fact you fornicated with my husband. I'm aware of his harem and even though I don’t like it, I know in the end, I am the most important woman in his heart.”
‘At least for now,’ a traitorous part of her mind whispered.
Zeoticus loved her. She knew that. He never ceased to tell her this in their more than thousand-long marriage but she was a devil. She was the daughter of a sinner and an Archdemon.
Venelana knew the nature of living beings intricately. She knew how nothing was static. She knew and saw how love could fade, how beautiful things could so easily perish. Venelana Bael had never lost any battle in any field. She would not lose now, she would not lose what she had fought to have.
“The thing with you humans is the fact that you multiply so quickly just like vermins. That is your only strength when we devils are lucky if we're able to bring in half a millennium one child into the world.”
Zeoticus and her had wished for children more than anything, well Zeoticus more than her but she knew that it would make him happy, she knew that it would make sure he'd continue to love her so she did everything to get pregnant.
They had tried so hard. They had used potions, stolen divine artefacts and forbidden magics that induced fertility yet in the end, it took them more than two thousand years to have both Sirzechs and Rias.
The same thing wasn’t the case with humans. They could bring quickly children into this world even paired with a devil or a demon.
This had been the strategy of some demon lords. Impregnate as much or let themselves be impregnated as much as possible by humans and use the children as foot soldiers in their armies.
Those children both human and demon, both mortal and immortal, those Cambions were either too weak at worst or as strong as an average high-class devil at best.
What Venelana feared was Zeoticus loving his half-devil children too much. She feared that he would prefer them to Rias.
Rias, her sweet Rias who was and looked so much like her yet who was so naive, so spoiled. It had been the fault of Zeoticus.
Rias didn't understand nested in the arms of her father and her brother how tenuous her position was. She didn't understand the cruelty of the world, how only might matter. She wasn't naturally strong like her brother and her father were.
She was born weak as Venelana had but unlike Venelana who understood this, Rias didn't. Rias didn't understand and was fine with how weak she was.
This is why she had pushed for a marriage contract with the Phenex scion even though she knew Rias had hated him since the first time she met him.
She wanted to show her daughter the consequences of being weak. She may have been harsh but she hadn’t been cruel. She gave Rias ten years, ten years where she could have trained, ten years where she could have discarded her weakness but her daughter didn't.
Instead of fighting for herself, she chose to flee from the underworld and run away from the future as if the world would be so kind. Sirzechs and Zeoticus accommodated like they always did and in return, Venelana reduced the time afforded to her.
Venelana knew her son and her husband more than anyone else In this world. She knew that in the case Rias would lose, they would find a way to help her break the engagement but at least Rias would learn how little, how powerless she was in this world.
You could not treat a disease if you didn't know you had one after all. This is why she had been more than surprised and horrified when she had watched the rating game against the Phenex spawn.
She had wanted to teach a lesson to her daughter. She had even consulted the Sitri Matriarch to see if there were any risks.
Rias was supposed to lose but be freed from her marriage due to a scheme of Sirzechs with the current Red Dragon emperor.
Rias wasn't supposed to almost die. Her daughter wasn't supposed to almost take her own life, erase her own soul or use it as fuel to fight against the Phenex.
She had tried to intervene but Ajuka himself was the one who created the false word where the rating game had been taking place. Venelana had been too weak to do anything.
She had thought she would have lost her only daughter. She had thought she would lose her Rias.
This was until Rias changed and evolved into something more. She watched how her child only grew stronger and stronger as if the dam on her potential had been broken.
Venelana had been more right than she ever thought she was. She also had been wrong thinking Rias was like her.
Rias was like her brother and Ajuka. It's just that, unlike Sirzechs, she hadn't been born strong. She needed adversity to get stronger.
Rias had never been before into a true fight, one where she was completely outclassed, one where she could lose everything and this had been why Venelana hadn’t been able to see this.
She watched how the Phenex changed, following Rias’ pace in a way he shouldn't have been able to. Venelana still remembered the Demon Phenex and how violent and vicious his flames had been, how thousands of cherubs had fallen under his claws. She still remembered how the demon had been able to fight the Egyptian supreme God Ra and his children together by himself resulting in a draw.
The boy had looked like a true demon and she had feared that Rias would not be able even with the unlocking of her potential to beat the Phenex but she did.
Rias had only proven her right. Rias had shown her that she had been right to take the actions she did.
She was scared that Zeoticus would favour another child not from her or that in the future, his possible numerous bastards could usurp Rias from her position as the Gremory Heiress but she didn't have to worry anymore did she?
Her children were strong. She had been able to sense that Rias had reached the ultimate class. Venelana knew she would only continue to grow stronger so maybe there was no point in killing the concubines of her husband?
Nah, she needed a hobby and old habits died really hard especially when they were older than decades.
She knew that even though Sirzechs loved her, he would never forget everything she put him through, how much she pushed him and how many times she broke him. She knew that he would never forgive how harsh she was with him even though it was the reason why he was today Satan Lucifer.
Her daughter may have tried to hide it but Venelana had seen the hatred and the fear directed toward her, that was shimmering in the eyes of her daughter.
She opened her palm and willed for her power of destruction to come into existence. It hovered over her palm like a dark shifting cloud.
“In the end, my husband won’t search for you because you don’t matter. Goodbye,” she said to the sobbing girl before erasing her body and her soul from existence.
Kindness wasn’t enough. It was fine if her children didn't like her. The only thing that mattered was that they were strong and safe. It was all Venelana could wish for.
Nothing was eternal. Venelana knew this. She would probably lose everything she held dear one day but as she teleported before her husband and saw him smiling at her, she felt as if everything was right in the whole universe for a moment.