My sword cleaved through the throat, the sound of music/song/hellmagic cutting off as my blade disrupted the flow of diabolism briefly.

I darted/dodged backwards, just avoiding a pair of grasping tendrils that wrapped around an afterimage of myself. They touched/hit the surface, and it shattered, shards of glass spinning off into devil flesh.

Too close. Even if this thing's sin/power/embodiment was sloth, it moved fast when it wanted to, and I couldn't get hit. It had a vast reserve of stolen souls suffusing it, giving it plenty of material to heal and empower.

I/we had left the souls inside the circle, just ripping my power out of their hands. I could have taken them, used them as fodder. I hadn't.

The devil's tendrils continued to whip, more emerging from its maw, and eventually, I ran out of space to run in. My saber lashed/swung/stabbed out once, twice, thrice, meeting tendrils as hard as steel.

It charged forward, corpulent mass propelled by the stick-like limbs with surprising strength. I darted to the side. My blade blocked a swift strike with one of the limbs, steel bending under the force of the blow. As I moved out of range, it was bent at a right angle, almost snapped off. Mortal metals would not suffice.

It turned, more limbs breaking free of its chitin hide. Souls shrieked/screamed as they were pulled from its center, forming into new limbs with serrated edges that dripped with some viscous orange substance.

I dropped my useless sword, focused. Skin split, bones screamed as I forced them to grow, to sharpen. The devil charged forth once again, and tendrils met forming sabers of bones pushing out of my wrists. I did not cut/pierce its flesh but neither did my blade break.

"I/she thought you'd be pleased," I mocked/taunted the Devil as we broke off. "Was it not your intent to send me/kil me so I'd end up in the Hells? This is just cutting out a few steps, isn't it?"

"You have not cut out any steps at all," The Devil hissed. "You have claimed it without-"

My tail lashed out, a blade of bone forming into a fin along its swelling length. I sliced deep into its corpulent neck, bile and green-black ichor spewing out as it stared at me, unimpressed.

"Is that all you will limit yourself too?" It said, disappointment plain. "Such a waste."

I didn't respond/reply, keeping a wary/cautious eye on the devil. True/correct, I was holding back, not really tapping/wielding the roaring rush of Diabolism I'd accepted back into my blood, changed/transformed. But letting loose with everything at my disposal would not leave anything left standing.

Then again, maybe it was time to break/shatter/rip/tear/be free of those chains.

The circles were at my back, any power or souls the devil could try to take firmly protected. Oh, and Alice too, I suppose. Just a step back with a hoof, touch it and eat those souls, devour them and-

Something snapped inside a little, and the other devil struck.

Fatigue washed over me, and my knees buckled once more. No subtle thing anymore, this was a hammer of exhaustion that had my eyes closing.

Pain ripped through my brain, scouring the exhaustion from my brain. It felt like acid poured directly into my head.

I rolled to the side, barely avoiding a tentacle slamming into the ground. "You are enjoying that, aren't you?"

It does fall under the definition of helping you, so I take great pleasure in aiding you.

More tendrils moved towards me. We exchanged blows a few more times, each time driving me back a little more. It was toying with me, only using a few tendrils at a time. Toying with me. I was doing my best, but not delving into the borrowed diabolism was costing me.

Fine. Let's hope it didn't cost me too badly. Blocking another swipe, I touched the lines of diabolism running through my veins, clawing for something, anything to help. Hellfire was there, but I dismissed that for now. Too random, too chaotic. Too likely to end up with me buried under burning wreckage, fried by my own efforts.

Something touched back, and a razor-sharp limb nearly made it to me as I tried to figure out what it did. This, it could-

The devil stopped playing, another wave of fatigue washing over me. A tendril wrapped around my saber, pulling me towards it. My second saber sliced the tendril, buying a second.

You know what you need, The Imp crooned inside me. Just reach out and grab it. That or die for these foolish principles you think have value.

As caustic as it was, the Imp had a point. I grasped for the diabolism inside, feeling for anything useful. Two, three things that might be useful that I could feel, my mind grasping at instinctively as my body shifted, smaller arms emerging from my sides. I faced the devil, tail splitting, more layers of scales emerging from my skin.

It didn't even try to duel.

I tried to move back, my limbs suddenly felt like I'd been running the rooftops all day. I collapsed, unable to get them to move as my mouth felt dry and my chest burned. Even when Golvar had made us train for fourteen hours a day, even that hadn't exhausted me as much as this did.

Meanwhile up top the chittering was audible, and I banished any thought of them eating out of my mind. No, they were being summoned, brought down here to end this while their controller kept me bound down with exhaustion.

Oh, how I wished to have magic like this, and that little thought kept me going as waves of lethargy crashed down on me. Tiredness/exhaustion crashing down on me, trying to smother still-burning/itching skin.

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I wasn't going to perfectly steal/take/mimic this devil's mask. For one thing, I had my vanity. Looking like an oversized insect/bug was far beneath me, even if it granted power. Instead, let's deprive it of its threat to those upstairs. One of my sub-limbs gestured, grabbing onto one of the things I'd taken from the diabolism in my blood.

The temperature plummeted, heat leeched into me as I got back up. I cackled as my hands and arms burned, colors traveling across them as I drew heat in. Breath hung in the air, frost was beginning to form on the walls, the circles, and on everyone. The devil paused, examined it for a moment, then continued its assault.

Not the only thing I had prepared, a poison brewing in my gut and another trick in reserve. The temperature plummeted as we continued our duel. I was not winning it, too many tendrils and sharpened chitin limbs for even two sabers and a tail. It cut flesh, tore chunks out of my hide, the missing pieces replaced as diabolism regrew. Not perfectly, little touches as spikes pushed through, as organs reworked what they did. Bones changing shape, an agonizing addition to this dance of death as diabolism took the opportunity to remake me as it healed me.

Twice the devil moved towards Alice and the two circles, twice I lunged forward, hand outstretched. It always backed away at the last second, not wanting to let me lay a hand on it.

It didn't know what I could do. If I could mess with the devil lurking inside that conjured suit of flesh and souls, I could permanently harm it.

It went forward a third time, and it turned towards me instead, tendrils wrapping around my body, a disappointed sigh as its grip tightened. This was fine. This was our/my plan, as bones cracked and creaked. But I got a hand on it, and started leeching heat from it instead.

It shuddered/shivered, as frost raced up its skin, covering limbs and body. Cracks/splits as it moved now, skin opening/ripping. The grip of the limbs/tendrils/claws grew weak as they began to break and shatter.

Colder, as wood cracked and groaned, the entire building shuddering as frost built and ice began to reach into the cracks of the wall. Colder, stealing the heat from everything and taking it into me as I blazed like a furnace.

Cold enough that still asleep forms here and above began to shudder, to still. To die, as the cold plunged beyond what any mortal should experience.

I paused. No, no not that cold. The devil wasn't frozen, still moving, diabolism replacing cracking skin, but already it was too cold!

If they perished, what did I/we/she care about, whispered another voice. A sacrifice that we should-

No!

Something inside cracked and I gritted my teeth. A brief blooming of warmth as the leeching of heat halts for a second. The devil tightened its grip, and from up above, its swarm broke through the ceiling, descending on us both.

They crashed into a form that shattered into glass, shards of the former me slicing into insects and making them scream. The devil swung around, gaze finding me immediately. Too late.

I plunged off the roof I'd been crawling along for both the last minute and until a second ago, diving with bone-sabers ready.

I cleaved into its physical form, slicing into the souls it's formed into armor and flesh. Its shriek isn't from pain, but one of anger. It needs to fill the gaps in its armor, and doing that takes its attention off the swarm.

A thousand changed and mutated insects suddenly find their minds returned to them. Bodies warped, most of them stuck in a tight, tiny space in a fight between me and the devil. Confused. Alone. Afraid.

And in a house that was colder than the outside winter snows.

They fled, even as the devil's arms grabbed me. My mouth bit into one, slicing through flesh, boiling blood filling my mouth, but the other five tossed me across the room. I got to my feet just in time, avoiding being dragged into its grasp.

Close. Too close. Summoning a lie of myself in the past that had become the truth had ripped too much out of me. It would take time to do that without risking going deeper.

I was grasping in the dark, relying on the intuition I had gained, partially just by touching the Circle twice. Entirely possible that it was lying to me, feeding me falsehoods in an effort to do something. It was alive in its own way.

But I didn't have another choice.

I bit down on its arm, letting the poison I'd brewed enter it. Dead flesh, but it would have diabolism connecting it to the soul, and the devil shuddered as it severed the connection.

An opening as one of my bone sabers sliced and cut, opening a rent in its main body as I plunged one of my newly formed hands deep inside.

My hand plunged deep into the cut sliced by my bones. It burned/froze/hurt as souls screeched and took bites out of my flesh, as the devil's limbs tore at me, but then my finger touched It.

"Found you," I whispered in a dozen voices, and then I channeled rot.

It screamed, flesh falling apart around my hands as decay ate at its soul. It writhed and flailed, and something wrapped around my chest, squeezing until my ribs cracked and my lungs burned. It tore me loose, throwing me at a wall. I smashed into it, brickwork shaking.

The devil reached up with tendrils, wrapping around the edges of the hole the insects had punched in the ceiling. It lifted itself up, more of the ceiling torn apart as its corpulent girth forced its way through.

I lay down, dazed, using diabolism to reach inside myself and force flesh back into the proper shape. More limbs began to emerge, but I stopped that, forced them back inside. It was..important for some reason to remain somewhat resembling the Old Shell.

I'd touched just the tail of it. I'd wounded the part of it using dead creature flesh as a shell, but the core of it had survived. I knew better than to think rot would claim more than a meagre portion.

It is not a lightweight, The Imp said. But neither is it particularly powerful for how old it is. Fitting for sloth. They are not very ambitious, nor effective when forced to act within a short time frame. It will become more motivated if you pose an actual threat to it, but ultimately it wants you handled with as little fuss as possible.

"Oh," I said/croaked/snarled/whispered in a dozen voices. "So, it's just holding/keeping back then? Wonderful/lovely/brilliant/I hate you."

Truly, how your feelings for me have evolved. It was too much to hope embracing your heritage would meaningfully affect that.

"Don't move!"

Oh. Joy.

Alice had woken up, scrambling to her hooves, back against the wall, conjured hellfire burning in her hand.

"I don't know who summoned you, but I have no quarrel with them," she said. "Are you here to hurt the owner of this house?"

Oh. Oh, right. I didn't really have the mirror, but I could see that where I'd towered over here before, there was probably an additional couple of feet difference. Thick coats of scales, additional limbs, the razor-like blade protruding from my tail, the sabers made of bones poking out from my wrist.

I probably looked a right terror.

I laughed, blood/ichor filling/flooding my mouth and coming out. Inside my flesh, strands of diabolism moved, forcing ribs back into place and sealing a pierced lung even as every cackle brought pain. Torn muscles reknit. Severed blood vessels closed. Worms of diabolism crept through me, holding me together.

"If you burn/roast/incinerate my house Alice, I swear I'll have your skin as a coat," I said.

Her eyes narrowed as my form became a little more like the old shell.

"Malvia?" Alice asked, looking up at me, mouth wide open, eyes darting between me, the ritual circles, and the hole the devil had torn through.

"Yes/no/maybe," I said, giving her a grin that she shied away from just a little. Strands/chunks/pieces of chitin and insect flesh still hung from my teeth, and my tongue fished/pulled some out to her clear disgust. "Still want me to take a bite?"

Other mouths opened as well, and she backed away.

"The hells did you do to yourself-"

"No time, and not important anyway," I said, turning away from her. Small eyes that she couldn't see remained affixed, though, looking intently at her. "Now is your chance/opportunity to run, if you want to. Take it."

She visibly hesitated, and I did not let myself fall for the latest trick, instead leaping up through the hole the devil had made in my floor. Whatever her decision, I should not care.

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