18 The Remaining Soldiers

Kokiabel felt a shiver of excitement down his back.

Was this it?

Was he going to die here?

Now?

Could his millennia of life of warfare, victory, and defeat come to an end today?

Would all his planning, his careful orchestration of events to his benefit, fail fruitlessly here, right before the finish line?

Kokabiel was one of the very few beings aware of how useless plans were before this foe.

With a mad grin, the Angel of the Stars stepped towards the bench and the young man sitting on it.

... When he wasn't immediately attacked, Kokiabel's excitement and nervousness started to fade, and wary caution replaced it.

Step after step, the fallen Cardinal approached. He made no move to quiet his steps, knowing it was pointless.

Yet no attack came. No ambush or trap.

It was just him and the boy.

Which meant...

"What do you need?" Kokabiel asked, sitting beside the sickly boy on the bench.

It was better to work with him. Trying to defy him would be pointless.

Kokabiel thought his plan was foolproof, but if there was one thing he had learned in his life of war, nothing was without flaws.

"From you?" Eren Yeager asked, not looking at the Fallen but facing the sky.

As if he was really blind.

"Nothing."

Kokabiel scowled but didn't lash out at the human.

"Then why are you here?" He asked instead.

If Yaeger was not here for him, then he had another goal in mind.

He knew the depths of the power within the human. Even if Kokabiel was not the reason he was in Kuoh, somehow, their meeting was part of his plan.

Whatever it was.

"I'm retired," Yaeger answered simply. "Just waiting to die."

Kokabiel couldn't help the bark of laughter that escaped his lips.

"Aren't we all," he chortled to himself. "And you chose here? In the town with the sisters of the current Satans? You are up to something."

The boy shrugged as if unbothered by the Cardinal's disbelief.

Kokabiel was no fool.

If Eren Yeager was here, it meant Kokabiel's fate was in his hands already.

This conversation was enough for the fallen angel to understand he had fallen into a trap.

Still, the old war veteran couldn't help but ask the question. The same question that had teased his mind ever since he set out on this course of action. This final plan.

"Do I win?"

For a long minute, Eren Yaeger remained silent. Then he gave his answer.

"Does it matter?"

Did it?

Kokabiel would restart the Great War and fight his long-time enemies until he died in glorious battle. It wouldn't be long, but it would be glorious.

Sirzechs Lucifer or Serafall Leviathan would stop at nothing to tear him to shreds.

Or he would die in the attempt, and Azazel would have the grounds for the peace he had always wanted.

Peace. Something Kokabiel couldn't stomach but was necessary for his race's survival.

No matter what happens, Kokabiel, Angel of the Stars and Fourth Watcher, would face his end.

"No," Kokabiel spoke, turning from the bandaged boy and staring at the sky. "It doesn't."

For a minute, both were silent, facing the sky yet not seeing it.

One was thousands of years old and responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of sapient beings.

The other wasn't even nineteen.

Both were terrible people by every metric imaginable.

Both had done everything they could for their people.

It was a silent moment of acknowledgment between two old soldiers, two men about to die.

That camaraderie, that resignation to an approaching doom, was why the words slipped out.

"I hate them."

The words were spat out with vitriol. Rage, despair, loathing, pain, and grief mixed in three words that failed to encapsulate all the emotions contained within.

"I hate them all," Kokabiel repeated, his fists clenching. The teenager made no sound. "They killed so many of us. My brothers and sisters. My comrades. My friends. Slaughtered. Tortured. Despoiled. I hate devils and their ilk. I hate the hypocrites that cast us out for doing our duty. I hate them all. Every one of them. I'll kill them all."

"Hate."

The boy tasted the familiar word, sampling it like one would a wine they knew intimately.

Then he shook his head.

"Old wars should be settled by old men."

The words of an old man in a young body.

Kokabiel knew that Yeager's abilities must be why he was like this. Why this mortal of only eighteen could speak on such subjects with such certainty.

Still...

"I know that," Kokabiel snapped, unwilling to be lectured by a boy in his teens. Even if it was Eren Yeager. "These kids," he spat the word. "They know nothing of war. Nothing of battles and death and destruction. They play their games. They fight for position and power. They only know peace."

"The goal of every war is peace." Yaeger was speaking, yet his words were light as if he didn't mean them, yet believed them to be true.

"THEN WHY CAN'T I BE AT PEACE?!" Kokabiel roared, standing from the bench and glaring at the boy. He didn't even flinch. "WHY CAN I NEVER HAVE THAT?! WHY DO I WANT TO FIGHT AND FIGHT AND FIGHT UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT BUT AN OCEAN OF BLOOD?! WHY IS EVERYONE ELSE ABLE TO FORGET WHEN I CAN'T?"

"They don't forget," Yeager spoke softly. "Nobody forgets war."

"Azazel is content to play with his toys," Kokabiel snapped, pacing in front of the bench as his wings flexed in agitation. "Penume drowns is sex. Baraqiel tried to play house." As if all the corpses at his feet were nothing more than waste. As if entire nations hadn't disappeared in a flash of Holy Lightning. "None of them care for the dead. Their grudges. Their wishes. What about their peace?"

Even as the fallen Watcher raged and paced, the boy sat still, unbothered by the being so beyond his league that fighting wasn't even a consideration.

They both knew who had the power here.

"We all move forward." Yaeger's voice was dry. Resigned. Words spoken a thousand times to a thousand people. "We all dream. But some dream of the sea. And some dream of what's beyond the sea. You and I? We dream of victory. They? They dream of a life after victory."

Kokabiel stop pacing.

"How?" He asked.

Not a plea.

A snarl.

Kokabiel would ever be the monster.

The fallen Cadre who tried to restart the Great War.

Whether he succeeded or failed, no one would ever celebrate his name. He'd be vilified by his own people, by his enemies, and the world.

A martyr nobody would celebrate.

But even monsters want to dream.

"I don't know."

Kokabiel barked a mad laugh.

He laughed and laughed and laughed.

His laughter was crazed, at once joyous as it was despairing.

It was the laugh of a dead man.

"If even Erin Yaeger doesn't know, what hope do I have of finding an answer," Kokabiel crowed in jubilation, arms spread up and wide to the sky as if to embrace the heavens. "If I shall never have peace. I shall have war!"

Then he rounded on the boy, marching with quick steps until he loomed over the tiny, sickly human. His shadow blotted out the fading light.

Yaeger did not so much as twitch.

Kokabiel longed to impale the boy on his spears, to force him to do... something. Anything.

Kokabiel wanted violence. He wanted rage and pain and death.

He didn't want this pitiful wreck of a man.

He wanted worthy foes.

Yet Eren Yeager was not one. Too weak. Too strong.

So Kokabiel sat down on the bench, his rage spent without an outlet to vent it on.

It left him... empty. Hollow.

What was he if not the rage?

"War is simple," Kokabiel spoke to the sky. "You kill your enemies, or they kill you. It brought out the best in us. The comradery, the passion, the bravery, the valour. It showed us who we were. We knew who were craven, duplicitous, and weak. It shaped us and forged us in the Holy Light and Demonic Dark. It was glorious."

He spoke the last word with a rapturous fascination. He would give anything to have those days back.

"We fought for something. A better future. And we were cast out. But we fought on. From one bloody battlefield to another. For centuries. And when He died? The victory was ours to claim. Our war was won. One final push, one last mountain of bodies."

That road to the top, paved with countless corpses, called to Kokabiel.

"But we didn't," the fallen spat. "We fled. Maybe if we had won, I would be able to close my eyes and not see them. Maybe I would not see their eyes accusing me. Why did they die if we would flee from victory? Why did we fight if we do not claim our prize?"

"Some soldiers die too young," Yaeger sighed, and, for the first time, his head turned from the dark sky to face the Fallen Angel. "Some soldiers live too long."

They sat there in silence for long minutes. The darkness of the park was contrasted by the city's light in the distance. Neither said a word. All that needed to be said had been said.

Then, when the time had come, Kokabiel stood.

"This seat is too uncomfortable to be my throne." Ten black wings flexed, and his almost vampiric features twisted in annoyance. "Irregular, too small yet too large. Old wood and steel. It makes me nostalgic for better times. It fits you, Child of Evil."

"This will be your last choice," Eren Yaeger said solemnly.

"I know not what your plan is, Yaeger," Kokabiel responded just as solemnly to the sickly boy. "Why you are here, nor what talking to me accomplished. I don't care. If you impede my plans, I will fight."

"I won't," Yaeger nodded.

"Then, no matter the outcome, I go to my last war."

It had been a good fight.

Two severed wings, a blackened stump of a hand, and dozens of wounds that bled freely.

Kokabiel laughed in glee.

More than he had ever wished, it had been a good fight.

The church executors had been barely noticeable, though a wielder of Durandal was a pleasant surprise.

No, it had been Gremory and her peerage that had been the real prize.

The Rook and Bishop weren't worth his interest, but the others?

They had gone above and beyond his expectations.

The Knight, a product of the Holy Sword Project, had achieved a mutated Balance Breaker before his eyes.

Holy and Demonic swords in a reincarnated devil.

The Old Man would be rolling in his grave.

Baraquiel's daughter was a gem and a half. It was crude, lacking the millennia of practice his comrade held with his element, but for a few moments, it was as if Kokabiel stood before the Lightning of God for one final time.

The Gremory herself was responsible for almost all the damage he had sustained. She didn't have the inborn instincts or power for the signature power of the Bael family as her brother did. She wasn't the monster Sirzechs was.

But she could be.

Kokabiel recognized it when he saw it. The hunger. The passion. The fear.

Rias Gremory wasn't born a monster. But she would shed blood until she became one.

The idea that the devils could gain a second Crimson Devil was so absurd that Kokabiel would have started a war just to stop it from happening.

But the greatest surprise was, hands down, the Red Dragon Emperor.

When the Cadre first heard that Ddraig's new host had been reincarnated as Devil, he immediately dismissed him as a threat.

Any Red Dragon Emperor that was reincarnated by someone not on par with a Satan, was automatically the weakest in history.

Vali would tear him apart in a heartbeat.

Then Kokabiel heard that he had achieved Balance Breaker in less than two months, and his hopes had risen.

Issei Hyoudou had surpassed even his wildest expectations.

The boy had not landed a single blow on the Fallen. In fact, Kokabiel's thoughts about him being the weakest Red Dragon Emperor ever were probably true if you just looked at his offensive capabilities.

But the Rook had not even tried to throw a punch once.

Instead, he had stood between Kokabiel and everyone else. All his Boosts went towards his durability or were passed to his comrades.

No matter the size of the attack, the potency of his Light, or how Kokabiel positioned himself, the boy was there—an impenetrable wall of red scale.

It was like seeing the true Red Dragon again.

So massive and powerful that even his greatest blow did naught but singe its scales.

Issei Hyoudou wasn't there yet.

He was too slow, and he couldn't leverage his body to counter properly yet, but with time to grow, he could be the greatest Red Dragon Emperor of all time.

Alone, they were impressive for their age.

Together?

Kokabiel had lost his wings when Hyoudou gained a hold, and the Gremory princess wrapped hoopes of Destruction around them. Reeling, he had blocked the Holy/Demon sword and Durandal with one hand and taken Holy Lightning with the other.

It had been his underestimating of them that had allowed them to hurt him, certainly.

But that they could hurt him at all was monumental.

Kokabiel hadn't been hurt at all in almost a century, and even that had been from the greatest exorcist the church had ever produced since the Great War.

Not even yesterday, he had cursed these children as not knowing war, of being addicted to peace.

He was right.

They didn't know the horrors of the Great War.

But they had it.

The killer instinct, the comradery, and the drive to push themselves till their bodies, minds, and souls cried out in pain.

Then they pushed some more.

Had they been born but a millennia earlier, Kokabiel would have been proud to give them a fitting death.

Instead, he would just make it quick.

He would despoil their bodies after they died, as had been done to his comrades during the Great War, to incite Sirzechs and Serafall further, but the children needn't be alive for that.

The fight had gone on long enough to know that neither Satan were coming.

Not even the revelation of God's death had drawn Heaven down or Hell up.

Were they so committed to peace that they would let these promising seeds die rather than take up arms again?

A shame.

With an idle thought, more spears of light gathered in the air. Unlike his earlier attacks, Kokabiel focused on them, carefully controlling their formation and angle of attack.

The children weathered the first volley well enough.

Baraquiel's daughter and the Ruin Princess dealt with many at range, and the rest of the group handled those that passed them well, deflecting and dodging those they couldn't destroy with sword or fist. The Red Dragon Emperor was solid, as ever, and the rest of the group slowly started to converge around him and the beacon of safety he provided.

That was their mistake.

It was easy to see the flaw in the Gremory peerage. They fought well, were more powerful than almost anyone their age, and were decently coordinated.

They had managed to injure him, after all.

But Kokabiel had not been entirely wrong about their lack of actual experience.

Tactically, they absolutely failed.

Even now, as they fended off an assault from hundreds of light spears, they failed to realize they were being corralled.

The Hyoudou boy was undoubtedly solid, but he was almost immobile because he focused on defending the rest. They, in turn, exacerbated the problem by giving more targets to defend.

The King and Queen of the peerage were powerful, but they lacked any sort of creativity with their magic. They were so focused on their attack magic that they failed to account for supplementary spells that would help the group remain mobile, hidden, or provide support.

Without the others to provide them opportunities, the sword wielders and Rook were unable to affect the battle in a significant way.

They had lost as soon as Kokabiel decided to take them seriously.

If he hadn't needed to keep their bodies intact, he would have simply blasted them and this town to pieces.

With all his enemies in a close grouping, another rain of spears fell from their hidden position in the clouds directly above the defenders.

With their death, Kokabiel would have his war.

[Divide!]

[Divide!]

[Divide!]

[Divide!]

[Divide!]

Kokabiel's war died with his spears of light as power flowed out of him and into a man in white armour.

It happened quickly.

Blink, and you'd miss it.

Kokabiel felt his remaining wings being severed. White armoured fists pounded into his body with stollen strength.

Kokabiel felt weak. Weaker than ever before.

In any other situation, he would have appreciated the irony.

Ddraig would rise to meet his foe.

Albion lowered his foe to his level.

As his plan came undone, Kokabiel felt rage well up within himself. He embraced the familiar fire as consciousness added.

Was this why nobody had answered his call to war?

Was Vali the reason why Michael did not descend from his throne?

Was the White Dragon Emperor, surely here at Azazel's behest, why the Satans were so sure of their sibling's survival?

Kokabiel could see it now. Could see the plan that had been woven around him. He had suspected but hoped to be wrong.

Kokabiel hadn't meant to restart the Great War. He had been a tool, a patsy, for his leader to have the justification to bring the other leaders to the negotiation table.

Even the Gremory peerage hadn't been in danger with the White Dragon Emperor nearby.

Kokabiel had been used to give them the experience he had just lamented they lacked, and as soon as it would cost them, Vali had descended.

The brat probably thought it was an excellent idea to toughen up Ddraig's wielder for their inevitable fight.

Kokabiel had been a puppet on a string dangling from the Scapegoat's hands.

A fitting name.

A scapegoat is what Azazael had made him. Like so many of his fallen comrades.

Scapegoats for peace.

Kokabiel had known that his failure would lead to peace, had expected it even, but still, he raged.

Raged at the vengeance he was denied.

Raged at the end of his war.

Then the rage, too, left him as he was carted back to the Grigori.

All that was left was amusement, wry and sadistic.

Kokabiel remembered the boy on the bench.

The boy who had known what was going to happen and known the foolishness of the fallen who visited him yet still offered an ear to an old soldier.

Kokabiel, Fallen Archangel of the Stars, was imprisoned in the ice of Cocytus, and, with his defeat, the great peace conference of Kuoh was called.

There, for the first time, a peace treaty between all three biblical factions was signed, marking the death of the Great War that had raged, on and off, since time immemorial.

One would expect that the fallen Cadre would lament or continue to rage in the wake of his failure.

Instead, the face below the ice of the Cocytus' frozen waters was light with laughter and mad joy.

Kokabiel's war died with him.

Eren Yeager's war had only just begun.

Kokabiel, as the ice consumed him, laughed madly, remembering the boy on the bench.