DxD: Celeste 17 (Patreon)

DxD: Celeste 17

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Commissioned by Chaosbrain

Wordcount: 2000

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“I was wondering when you’d ask for help to go back home. You’ve still got that savior complex, even though most of it is handled.”

“You could’ve told me that I needed to go back.”

“Nah, you’re still too hard-headed for that.”

Azazel walked me through a large room in a lab coat over his usual suit. I wore one as well. There was something about suits and lab coats that went well together. It was chic. Or, at least, I thought it was chic.

Anyway, the massive room held a giant sphere in a walkway. Hundreds of emitters of some sort lined the walls and each one was pointed at the sphere’s surface, which contained some sort of receptor or receiver. My guess was that Azazel planned to break through reality through sheer force via some sort of arcane-enhanced fusion blast that was concentrated enough to break through the subatomic walls that separated one dimension from another.

Kinda cute to be honest.

“Alright, lay it on me. What’d I do wrong? You’re smiling in that way that makes you look like a creepy old man.” Whoops, I was letting pride get the better of me. Azazel sighed as he pressed his hand against the floating sphere and we entered. Inside the sphere was a small circle where no larger than a finger could pass through. “The tests have gone well. I’ve managed to tunnel into the Gap, you know?”

“I told you about the Chimera, right? Those biological monsters tunneled through into our dimension from theirs with portals the size of skyscrapers. Monsters that size, too.” Pure biomechanical prowess and sciences that barely anyone understood utilized bio-machines the size of continents to create portals on other Earths. The Chimera were driven away, and were being scoured from Earth after Earth, but there was no doubt that they were an interdimensional civilization that was able to wield the extremely esoteric capability like a club while going out hunting for more organic matter. “There’s also Great Red. He just… motorcycles through dimensions like its nothing. Joins one point to another with a thought.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I can’t compare to an Aspect… or an interdimensional locust swarm.” Azazel grumbled, but didn’t look shaken at all. He saw that as a challenge. I wasn’t going to mention Song’s ability to just cut through into other Dimensions, though. That was just plain freaky. “Do you have examples of their ability, or are you just making fun of me without anything constructive in your pocket?”

“Lost my subspace inventory during the transition here, but I’ve built a test device from memory.” I pulled out the simple machine that I constructed when I first had the ability to do so. It was the size of the palm of my hand and didn’t tunnel through dimensions. However, it did show the ‘direction’ of the nearest dimension. It was compass, in a way, if compasses were the size of a brick despite the literal Aspect of Creation doing their best to create it. “This should be lighting up with dozens of points of contact. But look… we’re only seeing one and its hundreds of meters away. In terms of metaphysical distance, that might as well be in another arm of the galaxy. If we use this machine for it, we’ll need to make it the size of the moon and build it off of Mercury just so that we can power it with nearly-direct sunlight.”

“…In my defense, I didn’t know that there’s distance between dimensions. I thought we were all just stacked on top of each other.”

“It’s recent science in my world, too. Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait, if you can measure it and can attack Chimera on their worlds…?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a way of tunneling the distance… the issue is that we need Erica’s help for it.”

“Erica?”

I felt a cold sweat suddenly form on my brow.

“The Aspect of Eternity who’s the counterpoint of Aspect of Dreams?”

“You mean Ophis?”

Right.

I’d been trying to avoid thinking about that.

CORE didn’t exist here and somehow I was dead, Great Red was only a Dragon, and Eternity wasn’t a video-game NEET that lounged on Sheridan’s sofa.

This is going to be an issue.

By all accounts, in all other dimensions we visited, there were no alternate forms of Aspects and we were multiversal constants.

The ‘center’ pillar in a sense where everything else spun off on the horizontal axis, while time was the vertical axis, and… augh… metaphysics…

“Alright. First thing’s first. We need to find Ophis. She’ll be a problem and she’ll kill all the gods if we don’t, anyway.”

“…She’ll do what!?”

“I’m sure that I told you this already!”

“No! No, no you didn’t! I’d remember something that important, dammit!”

I ran out of the room with Azazel following after me with fury in his eyes.

I didn’t forget.

Right?

…

Unsurprisingly, looking for infinity isn’t that hard.

Sources of infinity power, no matter how well hidden, tend to be easy to spot when everything else is slowly falling to entropy. If everything else is counting down to zero in one way or another, finding a device that located a place where everything was going up was easy enough.

Well, for an Aspect of Creation that is.

I tend to be able to do that sort of thing.

However, I was surprised when my search brought me back to Hell and in front of Sirzechs Lucifer.

“The Aspect of Infinity is somewhere in Hell? How is that possible?”

“Most likely, it’s an Ouroboros plot. Probably linked to Lilith and her attempt to revive Lucifer.” I laid things out as straightforwardly as I could. The investigation on the event of Lucifer’s revival hadn’t finished before I vanished. I just had the general gist of things. “The protections we set up for your people, should he ever return, will hold against him. If he somehow convinces Ophis to break them… yeah, that won’t end well.”

Infinity is Infinity.

Just like Dream, Infinity is more primordial and more a thing that can never be opposed. The lack of rules and definitions makes it more difficult for them to interact with mortals, with their usage of their power guaranteed to be overt and extreme no matter the case, but it came with less limits. Song, for example, needed a fight to be at his best. Sure, the concept of fighting could be attributed to things like struggling just to live another day and holding on, but that was still more limiting that embodying all of everything and everywhere all at once.

Infinity and Dream can’t be contained, you can only live around them, and if they opposed you… you’re shit out of luck.

“Then, what do you propose, Celeste? What can be done about this threat to my people?”

I was glad that Sirzechs believed me, because the next set of words was going to be harder to believe.

“We’re going to extend dialogue, pamper her, and teach her to be a normal person.” Sheridan told me that luck and talent both carried him the day he met her on the day she’d slaughtered all the gods and tore apart their thrones. Someway and somehow, when he looked at her after she slaughtered a pantheon without losing a step, he’d approached her, greeted her, and introduced himself without fear. Without being afraid of infinity made manifest. And, the guy had the gall to tell me that he was just a normal human being. “Trust me, we’re going to be risking our lives every step of the way.”

Sirzechs was quiet for a long time, but soon enough he nodded.

“You have my full support. Do everything in your power to get Ophis away from the board.” I had worried that he’d have thoughts about controlling her, but Sirzechs proved to be a great leader in this timeline. I should’ve known, given the stable, peaceful nation of Hell when it was struggling to come together in my own world. Using Aspects like Dream or Infinity was a bad move. The best you could do was avoid them, or make sure that they had nothing to do with what you wanted. “What do you need?”

Now, therein lay the issue.

“You’re going to have to survive against Infinity for a bit, before I talk her down.”

“A bit?”

“A few seconds.”

“Against… Infinity itself?”

“Yep.”

“…I’ll get my affairs in order.”

Sirzechs was taking the proposal pretty well, all things considered.

…

Erica had contributed to the study of potential countermeasures against her, since there were a lot of Infinity Spheres in the hands of Ouroboros. The chance that they’d deploy something that had a fragment of Infinity, which was pretty much just Infinite itself with a ‘lesser’ output, was a big issue. After war-gaming a lot and making designs on a vessel that could potentially use the whole output of a whole Infinity Sphere, it was decided that Ouroboros would most likely use a specialized clone of Erica to do so.

Against that, it was determined that the clone’s state of mind would be close to her original, easily-persuaded state.

In other words, I needed to intervene and get her to listen to me and entice her to do something else.

By putting Hell’s leader on the line as bait.

“This might be a massive mistake. Sirzechs is key to keeping Hell in one piece. If we mess up, then we’re going to have a massive mess on our hands.” Azazel was covered up in a replica of his power armor back home. With Homunculi cores, he had a dozen powering it up and helping him along. He skipped a few generations since I had copies of the set available to me. Thanks for collaborating with CORE, my son in another dimension! He should be able to keep up with me. “We’re going to need to make sure that he survives no matter what.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better. What I’ve got should be enough.” I had more than a dozen different ways of increasing the distance between Sirzechs and Ophis. Three methods of teleporting him out of the way. Two powerful drones dedicated solely to being barriers for him. Not only that, but he wore armor beneath his suit that would even make Occisor glance off of him at least once. Enduring Infinity wasn’t possible. Avoiding an attack was. I’d give anything for a Nemesis crystal, though. That was a safety net that I would kill for. “And, by ‘should be enough’ I mean it’s perfectly overkill for the situation.”

Using just enough was for those with the luxury of being in a superior position. In our weaker position, we had to use a lot of resources to just secure Sirzech’s life.

But enough of that.

I turned back to Sirzech’s public speech.

“…Evidence has been found that there is a power in the wastes that is gathering. We believe it to be a malign entity that must be confronted without fail. One that is mighty enough that I must face it alone.” We gave off the coordinates of Ophis’ possible location to the public, so Ouroboros would see. We didn’t tell them that it was Ophis, but Ouroboros wasn’t going to let this opportunity to assassinate Sirzechs slip from their hands. “I will be leaving on an expedition this evening to respond to the threat as quickly as possible. If all goes well, then there shall be naught to worry about! That is all!”

On the surface, it was Sirzechs investigating Ophis’s location, which would entice Ouroboros to attack.

But, beneath, we were using him as bait to get our enemies to react and get Ophis on our side.

There was a lot riding on this plan, but the rewards were too great to ignore.

We’ll stop Ouroboros from receiving more Infinity Spheres, we’ll prevent the death of dozens of gods, and I’ll get in my way back home.