Not long after, agents from The Garden came over as support for Joshua, Rosalind and Derrick. When they got there, they found the place wrecked; the walls had been cracked, pillars destroyed and the three hunters alive but unconscious. Even more so, they couldn't find a demon or feel its presence. The demon had been eliminated.
From what they saw, the only feasible conclusion they drew was that the battle had been intense.They gathered up the trio then headed back to the Garden.
"I wonder what really happened here." One of them said to the other.
"It must have been a really intense battle." The other replied as they walked out.
Hanging from the ceiling, with the lower half of his body invisible as though it was absorbed into the ceiling was a demon.
"You have no idea." It said to itself in response to the agent. The demon was the same color as concrete though the light reflected off its body in a strange way. Its horns curved down to the sides of its face.
"This just keeps getting better." It said with a smile plastered on its face. Its body sank further into the ceiling as it vanished from the subway.
The demon emerged almost instantaneously somewhere in the sewers. Just a couple of feet ahead of where he stood was a large door which obstructed the path. Another demon appeared just beside the first: this one goat horns which were partially covered by thick and curly brown hair. It was muscular with green catlike eyes that were almost hypnotizing.
"Where have you been Lumos?" The latter asked.
"Oh! Code. You scared me for a moment." Lumos said light heartedly. "Observing the war as usual."
"Oh!" Code responded, seeming uninterested. He turned towards the door then Code called out after him.
"I saw something today. Something that will change everything; and not in a good way." Lumos said. His expression was oddly cheerful for the context of the statement.
"Do you know what a vessel is?" Lumos added.
"Someone capable of housing another soul in his or her body" Code responded in a textbook manner.
"Remember that new birth we placed at the old subway station?" He asked rhetorically then continued before Code could respond, "He's dead now."
"What?" Lumos said looking genuinely surprised. "I knew she was weak but I didn't expect her to die so soon."
Code chuckled, enjoying the look of surprise on his comerade's face.
"It was attacked by three demon hunters. It defeated them with ease, nearly killed one of them. Surprisingly, that one turned out to be a vessel. Before the host died, he swapped out with the imposter."
"What happened next?" Lumos asked, finally getting wrapped in the story.
"Well the imposter killed the new birth. It was brutal." He responded then smiled maliciously, "What was even more surprising was this: the imposter was actually a demon."
"Wait..What?" Lumos was thrown off balance completely,
"It turned on the host's friends, wanting to kill them." Code said then paused. He glanced at the door and smirked. "They're not dead if that's what you're thinking. One of them was able to bring his friend back with some crappy speech."
"Emotions to humans." Code continued with a chuckle. "It's a dumb but powerful thing. I'll never understand though."
"Wait!" Lumos said finally giving expression to the question that had been on his mind for a while. "Then who was the imposter in the vessel's body?"
As though on command, the large door before them swung open revealing what looked like a circular stadium with demons seated in the bleachers, hundreds and thousands of them. At the center of the room was a large round table with five chairs. Three of which had demons seated in them with the other two empty.
"Tch. I knew these poke-noses wouldn't resist" Code said inaudibly to himself.
"I assume you heard everything." He said loudly.
"Yes." One of the demons from the table in the center said. His voice reverberated the walls sending an icy chill down Code's spine. "Except for that one thing you haven't said yet."
"Eh?" He said slowly, enjoying the suspense and anticipation on everyone's face.
"Who was it?" Lumos asked once more.
Code chuckled then said, "None of you here's gonna like this, but let's see. The one of many names: The reaper angel, The demon tyrant, the devil himself…"
By now most of the demons' faces had turned sour as they knew exactly who he was; but Code cemented the mood by calling out the demon's true name, "...Thanatos."
The mood went dark. Everyone there re-lived their worst nightmares with the reaper angel, thanatos.
Murmurs erupted round the room,
"How is he here?..I thought we got rid of him?...Is it really Thanatos?...."
In the midst of the chaos and unrest he had just caused, Code's joy knew no bounds. He was ecstatic.
Just as he was enjoying it, a voice erupted from the other side of the room
"What's with all the commotion?" It said.
From the other side, two demons walked calmly out of the darkness of the room and into the light where everyone could see. The moment they were in plain view, the head of every other demon came down as the demons bowed fully before them, knees and all. The only ones who weren't bowing were those seated at the conference table and even they had their heads bowed subtly.
These two demons had human-like features unlike the others who distinctly stood out. To anyone who didn't look close enough, they were humans. But on the second look, they were completely different.
One of them had dark skin with light brown eyes that sparkled like gold and two large braids that were plaited to the back. However, on closer look, one would realize that his dark skin was not that of a normal black man but it seemed more like a thick armor worn as skin and the braids were horns.
The other demon who followed him was different, even on a closer look, he could easily be mistaken for a human. He had blonde hair, a weak jawline and an average figure. His eyes remained perpetually closed as he was asleep. In essence, he looked like the most average and regular human ever.
He could walk down the streets and nobody would look twice at him. More than that, he was the only demon who didn't have horns, making him look perfectly human. However, there was one flaw and that was his skin. He was so pale; he could be mistaken for a corpse that had been preserved for fifteen years.
This demon who slept was called Kamikaze; the other demon who came with him was called Itami.
Itami walked over to Code who was terrified while Kamikaze rested on a wall sleeping.
"Is this true, has Thanatos actually returned?" Itami asked in a controlled but commanding manner.
"Y-yes my lord." Code stuttered hopelessly.
"And is he really inside a vessel?" Itami asked.
"He is. The vessel is a teenage hunter so he will be no problem for you my lord" Code said, adding the last part in an attempt to appease him.
"Silence! Who said anything about going after a boy? I have much more important things to deal with." Itami asked, turning his back on Code and walking back to Kamikaze.
"Most likely he hasn't regained his full strength," said one of the demons at the table, "If we don't kill him now, it will spell serious trouble for us later."
"He really is something else" said another demon from the table whose voice sounded like that of a boy child. "The last time we tried to get rid of him, he sealed himself inside that cursed object that we couldn't destroy."
"But now, he sealed himself inside something we can destroy." The last person at the table spoke up. "Once we kill the vessel, we would have gotten rid of him once and for all. It doesn't matter which state he is in, once the host's body is dead, Thanatos will be too."
Itami considered what they said and came to a decision. He picked out two demons at random and ordered them to find Thanatos's host and kill him.
One of them was in conflict with himself. He was clearly too terrified to go look for Thanatos with the intention of killing him.
"I don't want to do it." The demon said inaudibly to himself then he repeated it out loud. "I don't-"
However, he never finished the statement; before he could, its head fell to the ground. Nobody saw how he was killed; all they saw was that Kamikaze who was still sleeping had stretched out his hand in the demon's direction and the demon's head fell off.
Itami picked out another random demon to replace the one Kamikaze had just killed.
"The two of you, find Thanatos's host and kill him. Do not disappoint me."
"Let's go." Itami said as he beckoned to Kamikaze and the other demon's at the table. "We have an important issue to discuss."
As he said this, all the demons seated at the table got up and left.
Meanwhile at The Garden, Derrick had not yet woken up and Angelina was terribly worried. She would neither leave his side nor eat.
He was being kept at the infirmary in The Garden while he was in suspended animation. He wasn't dead, but he wasn't really alive either.
Finch was also facing some issues of his own. He was faced with how to handle the inquiries from the higher-ups concerning the mission that went wrong. To protect Derrick, Joshua had given the higher-ups a falsified report but because of the inconsistencies in Joshua's report, they came to enquire from Finch.
He walked out of the infirmary and sighed heavily. "What a pain." He said to himself.
Suddenly, his eyes glowed and his mouth spoke of its own will.
"The two of you, find Thanatos' host and kill him. Do not disappoint me." These were the words which came out of Finch's mouth. Fortunately, there was nobody else where he was. He smiled mischievously where he was as he walked away
"Looks like I'll be having some fun."