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Emilia kills Satan before he manages to open the Portal. Alciel is imprisoned.Heaven wins.The Hero devotes her life to the Church and goes to a convent—for expiation for the lives she took and those she couldn’t save. There, in the garden, her mother—whom she never met before—appears to her with a child.“This is Alas=Ramus, Satan Jacob’s pupil, from the time of his reign. She is neither human, angel nor demon, but she is precious. Protect her with all your power, become for her what I never was for you. God knows I wish I could have been your mother, dear Emilia. May you find the strength to forgive me one day.”Emilia, at a loss for words for this mother she doesn’t know, accepts the burden. In her arms lay now an angelic infant, with hair of impossible colour.“My mother, Lailah, protector of humanity, has gifted me with this child. I must protect her and will endeavour to do so,” she tells the Pope. “I lay down my sword and relinquish it to the Church. Until the next threat from the unholy forces or against the child, I won’t be Hero nor Knight no more.”Secretly pleased by this development, as it rules out the possibility of her becoming a threat, the Church graciously accepts her retirement.Emilia the Hero becomes no more than a legend.Emilia stays in the convent, even if she doesn’t take the orders. She longs for the fields of her childhood but the pupil of Satan Jacob needs to be brought up under the love of God.At first, she tries to be only a protector and godmother for the girl. She tries to be stern with the child, to not become too attached. Emeralda is the first to make her notice that she is failing, that she’s becoming Alas=Ramus’ mother in every sense that matters. As her mother has wished; Emilia has become for Alas=Ramus what Lailah herself never has been for her.As years come to pass, the world changes around Emilia. The dear friends that fought at her side, so long ago, grow old with age and leave her to go back to the Creator. Like a tree, Alas=Ramus grows at a slow pace. She needs several years to accomplish what is a year of growth for a human child. Though she is bright, it is the brightness of a child and her logic is sound, if only hers. She is the light of Emilia’s life.There are many wars, but only against humans. Very rarely the world sees new inventions born from human mind, and only for the war, but life is peaceful and isolated in the convent. Many are pilgrims that come to them in the hope of enlightenment, blessings, or the secret of their long life. Emilia humours them sometimes but, mostly, she keeps to herself.Some enemies go against the Hero of old and her daughter; most are stopped by Emilia herself, sometimes by Alas=Ramus, and all relinquished to the Church. She has learned the danger of politics, for her years have not all been peaceful—even if neither the Church nor the crowns had succeeded in ending her or her child.From her retreat from the world, Emilia Justina comes to threaten the power of the Church in the exact manner that her old mentor—Archbishop Orba—said she would, all those years ago. Anyone that comes to her will be judged with justice and impartiality, no matter the decision of the Church, and many more are said to be under her protection. Many of the people name her Saint, despite the Church being slow at recognising her as such.A village is built near the convent, growing to be a powerful city in time. Emilia and Alas=Ramus can be seen enjoying themselves in its streets from time to time and Appleborn is rumoured to be the safest and most peaceful city of all. Heaven on Ente Isla, say some.Two hundred years after her victory on the Devil King and his unholy army—Alas=Ramus seeming only ten years old and Emilia twenty-five—a man comes to the convent. Under the guise of being a pilgrim, he attempts to kidnap her child. Bright as she is, Alas=Ramus escapes him and Emilia stops him. He is of unseen strength and, for the first time since the demonic wars, Emilia calls for her old sword, Better Half. She kills him, as he won’t yield. Her sword goes right through his chest and when she finally gazes upon his face, an old fear strikes her heart.For she had seen the face of this dead man in many of her nightmares, when she was young and inexperienced in the art of battle. Lucifer unfurls his wings as black as his heart and smirks.“Heya Hero. Long time no see, heh?”She doesn’t have time to react. Alas=Ramus screams and someone lands a hard blow on her head. Emilia falls.When she wakes up, another dead man is watching her on the other side of the bars that trap her in the prison cell.Satan Jacob, suzerain of the Red Moon, Devil King of Demons, himself.Emilia is less surprised than she should have been, to see him here. If Lucifer is alive despite what she thought, then it is not surprising Satan would be too. She is not surprised, she is angry.“Where is she!?” she exclaims, anger in her tone, fury in her eyes as red as blood.It’s like she is young again. Anger is streaming in her heart, boiling in her blood—fear is choking her. What if he killed her daughter, what if tortures her, what if… She won’t show him her fear, no, she can't, she won't, but anger is safe. Anger is expected in this situation.“You should be concerned for yourself, Hero. Not some pupil of yours.”His smirk is caustic, he thinks he has her at his mercy. Her teeth ground against each other. Emilia strains her arms handcuffed to the wall, wanting to rip his smile off his lips with her bare hands. How dare he!?“If you hurt my daughter, I swear on everything holy, I’ll rip you apart!” she snarls. “And you will stay dead this time!”It is strange, how fear and anger reduce you to the most basic instincts of your existence. Emilia is known, in these times, to be level-headed and just. To think of her words and actions before carrying them out. And here she is, menacing the Devil who has her daughter in his claws without a second thought, not even attempting to negotiate or discover how he could be here.Emilia has learned to be a warrior and a mother before becoming an intellectual. And here, where her head would have been useful, she relapses in her old habits. Fight, survive, then think. What a bad habit.Satan is not impressed but he is surprised. She wonders why. Alas=Ramus is her daughter, for two hundred years she has been. What does he think she would say?“That’s curious,” he says, with a new insufferable smile, “who would have thought the Hero would adopt the daughter of her arch-nemesis?”“You’re not my arch-nemesis, you’re nothing but a ghost of the past,” she scoffs. “Alas=Ramus might have been yours before but that was a long time ago. She is mine now,” Emilia refutes with cruel indifference. “She doesn’t remember you and what she knows about you is nothing but your crimes against humanity. You are nothing to her. Not anymore.”Eyes on his face, she sees the slight widening of his scarlet eyes, she sees him clenching his jaw. Her smile is ugly, victorious. Spot on. That’s a sore point. If he tried to kidnap Alas=Ramus because she has been his daughter and not only his pupil as her mother as said… Yes, she can imagine how it would hurt, to have your daughter against you, not recognising you, treating you like a monster.It doesn’t have the same sick feeling of victory as before, being able to hurt him. Emilia, used by now to care for others instead of killing for protecting them, feels a little bit of surprising guilt. It’s cruel. She hadn't known she could be this cruel. He really does bring out her ugliest side.She swallows the guilt. She is his prisoner. She can’t have guilt, especially not towards him. She needs to keep her head on her shoulders—both literally and figuratively—and save her daughter.“What do you want? Why are we here?” she asks after a long stretch of silence.He stands here for a long time, watching her like an owl would watch a funny mouse—except she’s not a mouse, she hadn’t been a mouse for a very long time now. He doesn’t answer, goes back to where he came from. She screams at his back retreating, demanding answers, demanding to see her daughter.Ignoring her, he disappears up a staircase.Once upon a time, before Heaven’s victory over the Devil, before her motherhood, before their kidnapping, before, when she was just a child with a sword, Emilia danced. She danced to the moons, and the stars, and the blood on her hands, under her nails, in her eyes, and the joy, and the wild, and the insane, and all that is that the Church doesn’t want her to know about.For a wild night, during the renewal of spring, the witches of the city she was in at the time had made her dance in the forest; war and destruction forgotten in the wake of savage music, of a deep song coming from their throats, lost in a mysterious fog drowning the forest surrounding them. For a night, Emilia hadn’t been the Church’s child soldier.She had been alive.She learned, that night, that witches are not servants of the Devil and his hoards of demons.Witches are the children of Ente Isla.And the Church is wrong, as it is often, to accuse them of treachery. It is witches that tend to the wild forests of old, the forests nobody dares go into; for the beasts in them are those of legends.Emilia knows Ente Isla.Its magic, its children, its will to live despite the tyranny of the Blue and Red Realms of the Moons. She knows God has not created everything despite what the Church is saying. She knows the Church is lying a lot—and it is why she never took the orders, despite living in a convent.In those days, Emilia had been a child with a sword.Today, Emilia is a creature of old herself.And in her cold and damp cell, Emilia draws on this magic that wasn’t meant for the Hero of Heaven but that witches had taught her. For her father was a child of Ente Isla, as much as her mother is a child of Heaven.Her chains fall on the ground like thunder.Emilia is free.Free, and angered.They are in a castle, she discovers quickly. The architecture reminds her of Norse, even if it’s not quite right. But she hasn’t gone outside of her city for two hundred years, it is likely the differences are just from evolution and time. They are in a castle, as they were that night two hundred years ago. When the Hero vanquished the Devil.And, as the night on that fateful day, Emilia finds what she is looking for in the throne room.In the middle, directly illuminated by the lights of both Moons, a child of light and amethyst, glaring at the Devil who looks weirdly disconcerted. Lucifer and Alciel are here too; one is laughing as he watches and the other looks angered. Emilia slips into the room unseen and hides behind a colonnade, wanting to see what is happening before acting.“Free her!” is shouting Alas=Ramus. “Why are you doing that? You don’t need to!”“Yes, because you will come back to your true family without a fuss, right?” drawls Satan, caustic despite his slightly lost expression.“Yes.” Emilia can feel the ice in her veins, the fear that her daughter would want to leave her drowning all sounds for a heartbeat. “…I remember you all, and I want to be with you again. Truly!” Emilia’s mind is thrown into chaos. What does that mean- “But I don’t have a ‘true’ family” Alas=Ramus refutes, finally. “You may be my dad, but Emilia Justina is my mom. And I want to have you both!”She stomps her foot, like she did when she was five and still throwing tantrums, and Emilia finds her footing again. Her magnificent, manipulative, young daughter. She wants both her parents—and isn’t that interesting?—and have no qualms about breaking the rules to achieve her goal. Emilia doesn’t agree with said goal, at all, but she has discovered a long time ago that some things are worth a sacrifice. Even her integrity and her morals. Her daughter is worth all.She will play in her hand and see where that would lead them. At worst, Alas=Ramus will understand some people are not worthy of her love; it is a lesson to be learned. At best, she will be happy and Emilia will be able to thwart any criminal plans from the Devil; that, too, is a lesson to be learned.The Hero emerges from her hiding place, back straight and proud, her eyes tainted red as blood by her angelic power.“Very well, young lady. If it’s your wish, we will stay here.”“Mom!” she exclaims, surprise and relief in her voice, and flies toward her.Emilia hugs her, relief melting her hard edges—she’s alive and well and alive— before taking a step back. She looks at her daughter, serious and displeased, but her hand is soft when she puts her amethyst lock of hair behind her ear.“You and I will need to talk, Alas=Ramus.”“I know.” She sounds regretful but Emilia only raises an eyebrow, far from buying her seemingly contrite behaviour. Her daughter doesn’t regret her decision nor her words and both of them are quite aware of that. “I should have told you.”“You should have, yes.” Emilia lets the topic drops as she raises her head to look at her three old enemies. She is not particularly pleased by the idea of living with them for an unknown length of time but, for her daughter and the protection of the world, she is ready to endure it. “What is done is done. I believe we have other matters to discuss?”She is ready to play in her daughter’s palm, yes. It does not mean she is ready to do it without conditions. Mother, she is, but protector too. And this is what she will negotiate—peace for Ente Isla and its inhabitants.Emilia won’t see another war destroy the lives of her people.