Toji no longer bothers sneaking in. With all the chaos outside, he doubts any of the lesser demons would come to swarm him inside the fortress. Also, he realized early on that only the more powerful of them come inside. Perhaps, it's simply a part of their hierarchy or maybe they know that disturbing any of the more powerful demons would only lead to their destruction.
Either way, the mercenary doesn't care. The only thing that matters to him at the moment is to be able to finally let loose. He can already feel the magical shackles strapped around him slowly breaking. Some more time in hell and Toji will finally break free.
The mercenary walks through a seemingly endless hallway when he hears footsteps ahead of him. Toji leaps at a demon before it even noticed him. With a powerful strike, he rips the creature's arm and imbeds it deep in its chest. The demon gasp as it falls limp on the floor. Then, he hears pained groans coming from a room. Toji opens the door and sees cloaked creatures which he quickly realizes are humans standing in the middle of the room. They cover their heads with hoods Chained to the walls were people, most of them covered in cuts and bruises.
Toji leans to one side, letting the darkness of the shadows cover him. He watches with indifference as one of the cloaked figures drags one of the bloody women and throw her at the foot of their leader, someone wearing a disfigured mask, who easily picks up the woman and runs a dagger around her neck..
"Quickly, prepare the next one", says he masked man. "The blood ritual must be completed today".
The rest of them nod as they pull out blades of their own and begins executing the prisoners. One of the hostages try to crawl away, unintentionally moving towards Toji. "Hell me", begs the bloody woman as she tugs at the mercenary's pants. Toji looks at her before turning his focus on the cloaked men now surrounding him.
Before they could even utter a word, Toji quickly grabs the hooded man closest to him and takes his weapon before throwing him at his comrades. The mercenary starts cutting up the rest of the hooded man. Already, he feels the shackles binding his strength begin to lose its powers.
Toji makes quick work of the remaining villains, breaking their arms and legs. The mercenary knows that after he and the heroes are gone, the demons will handle cleaning up whatever is left of this room. Seeing that all the cloaked men are incapacitated, Toji begins to leave the room. But then, he steps to the side as a dagger almost cuts his neck. He shoves his assailant to the wall and rips the weapon from his hands. Toji grabs the man's neck and sees the arrogance in his eyes.
"You've already lost", says the hooded man between strained gasps. "The ritual is complete. Enough blood's already been spilled".
Toji smirks. "Then a few more drops won't matter, would it?" The mercenary points the dagger at the man's chest. As he slowly pushes it forward, he feels Doctor Fate's magic resisting him. His wrists begins to glow as marking appear around them. The mercenary continues to push the dagger and the markings begin to form a crack.
Toji's smile widens while the hooded man squirms as the tip of the blade begins to dig into his neck. The other man tries to speak but Toji tightens his grip on the man's neck. The magic's crack gets bigger and bigger until the glowing thing on his wrists fall like broken glass.
The mercenary sighs with bliss as blood flows from the dagger now sheathed into the hooded man's heart. Toji drops the corpse and begins feeling his wrists. Finally free of the magical shackles, Toji leaves the room with a slight hop to his step.
It took him a while to finally reach the entrance to the room controlling the gates. On his way here, Toji left behind a mountain of corpses, both demon and human. Strangely, the mercenary was more surprised by the lack of demons in the first fortress. Instead, after some painful questioning, he found out that the fortress actually belonged to a human wizard. Still, there we no point thinking about it now.
Toji opens the massive door and sees the lever needed to open the gates. He quickly pulls it and hears chains gritting as the contraption begins to move. With the fortress cleared and the gates opened, the mercenary heads out to meet with the heroes.
---
Raven continues to support the rest of the team as endless waves of demons come crashing in their position. The shield she raised is already starting to crumble. Looking around, the rest of the team have already reached their limit. If the black haired man doesn't come soon, it'll only be a matter of time before they get killed, or worse, captured by the demons.
The pale girl throws Hellfire at an incoming demon making it scream in agony as the flames devoted it. She then hears a crash and sees the speedster fall on the ground. Raven quickly runs to him and raises a shield around them before using her magic to crush the attacking demons.
"You alright?", she asks.
"Yeah", answers Wally with a forced smile. "Just need to catch my breath for a minute".
"We don't really have a minute", says Raven, throwing more Hellfire at any incoming enemies. "Are you sure your mentor can sneak through the fortress? We should have just forced out way inside together".
The speedster smiles at that. "Trust me. That dude does not need our help. Just wait. You'll see".
Suddenly, the group turns their heads as they hear a loud roar coming from deep within the demon horde. A few of the smaller creatures get thrown to the side as a large humanoid creature in thick rusty iron armour slowly walks towards them. It swings its axe and cleaves through the demons in front of it. It then gives out a gutteral roar as it points at Raven. "Your father has been looking for you".
Raven gulps. She's never seen the chaos knights outside her father's castle before. Before she could stop them, the two Kryptonians rush at the armoured demon, firsts and weapons raised. However, the creature easily swats them to the side before walking towards Raven. It looks at her before turning its head and looking at Wally. "You do not deserve to sit at the princess' side".
It raises its axe but as it swings it down, the axe is met by a blade. Raven looks in awe as Toji guards against the chaos knight's weighty swing.
"Looks like I'm just in time for the main event".
---
A. N.
Hi peeps. Hi again. Another week, another chapter. So, Toji is now free of the shackles. That should be enough excuse for me to give him a power boost.
Also, I made a mistake about his age. Toji is actually in his 30s when he died. This is all conjectures since the writer didn't actually confirm it but a lot of sites beloved so.
Because of that, my two current paths are either to age up some other characters to make the Supergirl x toji work. Or I can just rewrite their relationship to a father-daughter pair.
I'm leaning towards the latter since I think it would be a more wholesome pairing. Also, romance is overrated.
Tell me what you think. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Cheers.