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Devilish Impulses	By : Arianawray Category: > Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji ???) Views: 13948 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Kuroshitsuji or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 1-Unwanted
- 2-Whim
- 3-Trust
- 4-Taste
- 5-Scheme
- 6-Command
- 7-Competition
- 8-Advice
- 9-Enlightenment
- 10-Sustenance
- 11-Caught
- 12-Breath
- 13-Arms
- 14-Inflammation
- 15-Imagination
- 16-Intent
- 17-Compromise
- 18-Sacrifice
- 19-Despair
- 20-Compassion
- 21-Interest
- 22-Equality
- 23-Mentor
- 24-History
- 25-Disorder
- 26-Reputation
- 27-Gifts
- 28-Admission
- 29-Watching
- 30-Bonds
- 31-Revelations
- 32-Confrontation
- 33-Struggle
- 34-Separation
- 35-Duty
- 36-Change
- 37-Together
- 38-Love
- 39-Epilogue: Heaven
- 31
- 32
- 33
Confrontation

Demon. Possessed of a key.

Engage, incapacitate, subdue, remove key, effect transfer, disengage.

Shinigami. Unlinked.

Tear open, disable, cast aside.

Pack of twelve fairy folk. One linked.

Shatter eleven, seize the one, take key, unlink, transfer, disengage.

Angel, long unconnected with heaven. With key.

Thrust claws through, seize chain, remove key, transfer, break wings, discard…

One after the other, Sebastian takes them on, over and over again. They have come, all of them, armies behaving like a mob. Some are certain of their mission to destroy a devil who has surged beyond control with power he has seized; others feel only the pull of a spell from more than two centuries ago, which should never have been cast. The pull is especially strong for those who are knowingly or unknowingly chained to Phantomhive and linked to the scale of balance. Thus, to his satisfaction, they are all here – all the keys, all the chains.

He has been battling them for hours, the vast power he has accumulated giving him speed and strength he never had before, while his enemies, in their numbers, get in each other's way.

Elf.

At first, they stood in an uneasy alliance, thousands of them of different species, decrying his acts and the threat he posed to the balance of the world. Then when they learnt of the chains secretly concealed within the links they had allowed to the cosmic scale, they had begun to quarrel with one another as he stood alone and amused in their midst. That was when he had attacked them and seized several of their chains for himself. They had promptly swooped in on him all at once, but lost him in the melee while starting fights with one another. Now, they are coming at him one, two or three at a time, and he is handling them with insouciant ease. But they are relentless, and he is unlikely to last the several days needed to destroy them all. Though he has acquired terrible power, these beings are not mere humans; they are devils, angels who have deserted heaven, soul reapers, nymphs of many forests, and numerous fairy folk who usually keep to themselves, but will emerge for war if their autonomy and safety are threatened by one such as him.

Devil.

His most important task here is to aim for the ones bound to Ciel with chains that in turn shackle the boy to the magical scale. Once he has transferred all the chains to himself, he will have done his work. Ciel will be free of the bonds, almost completely free of the spell, no longer to be slowly crushed by the burden of turning into an outlet through which the imbalance of worlds can right itself. The only hold of the original spell on him then will be his connection to the crown of England. That cannot be severed without the monarch's cooperation – not without harming the earl. But at least it is a humanly manageable burden, and Sebastian trusts that Ciel's cunning will drive him to continue persuading Prince Edward, or his successor, to uncollar him eventually.

Soul Reaper.

With crystal clarity about his duty to the boy, he dispatches opponent after opponent. Every creature gathered in this space is immortal, but that does not mean he, she or it cannot die. Any devil, angel, soul reaper, nymph, elf or sprite can be destroyed by magic, supernatural weapons such as soul reapers' scythes, or other immortal beings. As he engages them in combat, he only cripples some, but utterly destroys others, leaving what elements remain of their immortality to go where they are meant to.

Angel.

That is what will happen to him in the end. He will be annihilated one way or another before he leaves this space. Whether the remnants of his immortal nature will disperse or remain in one place, whether those remnants will retain any form of consciousness, he does not know. Unlike humans, who have body and soul and spirit, and whose souls and spirits continue after their physical deaths, immortal beings are largely spirit to begin with; their bodies are often disposable. So he does not know what will become of his spirit when he is destroyed, no more than any living human knows what will happen to his soul when he dies. He only knows that in the last year of his long existence, he has lived his life well, far better than he lived it for millennia before then. He is ready to meet his end.

One strong devil comes at him. Sebastian is pleased to engage him in combat, for he has a chain and key on him. How did the spell determine how to distribute the bonds amongst all these beings? Perhaps it was conducted over a period of time, and whoever responded was linked to Phantomhive and the scale as and when contact occurred. Perhaps the spell randomly selected individuals from each race whose representatives agreed to deal with the humans who wielded the stolen magic.

"Why are you doing this?" the devil snarls in his face, as they grapple for the upper hand.

"You would not believe me if I told you," Sebastian smiles, finding an opening, seizing the back of the other demon's head and forcing him down.

"Thanks to you, we have learnt that chains binding us to Phantomhive were secretly concealed by those spell-working mortals in the links to the cosmic scale we permitted. Why do you not give us time to discuss the ramifications of that revelation, instead of attacking us and wresting the chains from us?" the devil hollers from beneath him. "Why snatch the power of one immortal after another, and confirm everyone here as your enemy?"

"You would never understand, and there is no time to explain."

He plunges his claws into the other's body, extracts the link and chain, and with the speed granted him by practice and power, locates the key, unlocks the chain, burns the unneeded half, and severs the rope-link. He is doing this immeasurably faster than when he dealt with the first nymph-queen. The other end of the chain locks onto his spirit, one of many he has collected; one less on Ciel. He hurls the devil away after ensuring he is sufficiently incapacitated to be out of this battle for at least a day.

"Fools!" roars a rogue angel. "He absorbs the power of each creature he disconnects from the scale of balance, and grows stronger with each triumph. Keep those of your kind with any link to the forces of balance to the rear, and send others to the fore!"

Sebastian sighs. That will make his task a shade harder. But he has transferred more than half the chains already. Not so very many more to go. Fortunately for himself, it appears that the prince of his realm was not among those who cared to personally respond to the lure of the spell more than two hundred years ago. He would be a troublesome one to tackle, even with enhanced strength and power.

Suddenly, he hears the boy's call. Sebastian? The pull it exerts on his entire being is almost irresistible. How easy it would be to abandon this war, fly to Ciel, wrap the boy in his arms, shut his eyes, and hope for the best. But how terribly selfish that would be, to flee towards his master's voice for just one more hour with him, one more minute...

Sebastian!

He ignores the call and dispatches another opponent, one who to him is virtually worthless, for he has no chain he can unlink from Ciel. A low-ranking Shinigami, that one was. Speaking of Shinigami, where are Grelle Sutcliff, William T. Spears and Ronald Knox? He spares a swift glance at where he last spied the band of soul reapers, and spots Grelle's flaming red hair. It will be interesting when those three finally swoop in to engage him in battle...

Sebastian!

His heart aches from the near-unbearable tug. The child must be confused and upset. But a pack of nymphs from forests other than the one governed by the nymph-queen he had fought yesterday converges on him. He grimly locks Ciel's cry away into a deep recess of his heart, and tackles the platoon of warrior-nymphs with a little more difficulty than he had anticipated.

He is slowing down, despite his unnatural strength. Every hit and every contact takes its toll; every second of this battle wears infinitesimally on him. Ciel's calls have also found that tender place in his heart reserved for the boy alone, and for the tiniest moment, he softens under the melting trickle of regret. But the moment passes, and he marshals the echoes of his young master's cries towards hardening his resolve. With renewed viciousness, he grins and plunges deep into a phalanx of sprites to seize two of them. He sustains some damage from that dive into their midst, but the scratches are worth it, for he surfaces with two more links to the scale, and leaves a heap of broken creatures in his wake.

Sustained by the additional power he has grasped, he dives again into another cluster of fairies, and emerges with yet another two chains on his spirit. He is now so heavily linked to the cosmic scale that he must begin to channel some of his power towards keeping the scale in position. As a human, Ciel had no authority to control the scale, but as a devil, Sebastian does. He must perform this important task, for if the worlds become unbalanced, everything and everyone – Ciel included – could perish in a planet-wide catastrophe of earthquakes, wars, floods, fires and famine. What would be the use of fighting so hard if the one most precious to him should die along with the rest of humanity?

This will weaken him somewhat, but it must be done. As he shatters the body of a devil who has lunged towards him, he releases some of his power along the lengths of the chains to the scale, to keep it even.

He swivels about and tackles another two rogue angels with satisfaction and a smile, breaking them in several places before hanging back to see what carnage he has caused amongst the armies. Being Sebastian Michaelis, he takes a second to appreciate the fact that through all of this, he has not once resorted to assuming his demonic form, but has remained impeccably attired as a Phantomhive butler, with a coat that is largely intact, except for where he sustained the scratches from his two boldest dives.

One more soul reaper – one more chain. One more group of nymphs. No chain. One more devil and yet another chain. A little more release of power to steady the scale. He is doing quite well –

Then the first major hit comes.

He gasps, looks down at where a long instrument protrudes from his right shoulder, feels the blood spurt out of him, and looks up to see the unemotional, bespectacled face of William T. Spears, who has driven his scythe clean through him.

***

Sebastian... Sebastian... is the rhythm to which Ciel's heart pounds, as he races over to his study, where Ambrose's heaps of material are neatly stacked on the shelves. Soma, Agni and the Phantomhive staff fill the doorway of the study in time to see the boy slam a pile of papers onto his desk and begin to flip madly through them.

"Agni," the earl says in a calm voice – too calm for anyone's liking – as he turns over sheet after sheet. "Did you say that the disturbance you sensed in the air as you returned to the manor this morning suggested that something had happened here in the night, but whatever it was seemed to have gone somewhere else?"

"Yes, Lord Ciel. What significance does that have? Do you know what has really happened to Sebastian?"

Continuing to turn over leaf after leaf of the papers before him, Ciel replies: "He is in great danger. I believe he is facing his enemies and mine in a world that occupies the same space as this world we are in. But it is a world we cannot see or touch, because it is separated from us by magic. Sebastian and I were once trapped for hours in one such nowhere-world, which was not heaven, hell or earth. I shall find a way to enter that damned space in which he is going to die unless someone stops him – and I will do everything in my power to save him. I only need to know how the hell to get there. Ambrose said I had an innate talent for such things... he said I had natural abilities without ever having tried to cultivate them, considering that I accidentally summoned Sebastian four years ago – and when we were in that nowhere world, I apparently turned it into a great forest while I was unconscious. So I can do this. I will do this."

"Lord Ciel," Agni says warily. "Do you mean that you intend to work a magic spell?"

"Yes."

"No!" Soma cries, stepping forward. "If you've never done this before, it will be terribly dangerous. Agni and I know about magic – many people practise it in India, in different ways and forms – and we know spells are very risky for the untrained!"

Ciel looks up at him, his wide blue eyes filled with a pure, grim determination. "I must do this, and I will," he states in a voice that announces he will brook no opposition.

"Sebastian would not want you to!" Soma cries.

"I don't care what the bastard wants right now," Ciel says firmly. "I'm going to him, and when I see him, I will slap all the sense he has lost back into his stupid head, and I will drag him back here with me, even if all the devils of hell come after us."

"Lord Ciel, I take it that the second letter you read has assured you that Mister Sebastian did not betray you?" Agni asks.

"Yes."

"If that is so, and if he is battling your enemies and his right now – for your sake, I assume? –how could you risk wasting the sacrifice he is making for you by putting yourself in danger?"

"He should have thought before making such a sacrifice whether I would regard a life without him worth living or not," Ciel mutters angrily, continuing to search the pages for the particular spell that he remembers having seen in his previous scanning of the papers.

Yes. Here it is. Something Ambrose wrote especially for him. It details what he did to create the boundaries of the nowhere-world that was a reverse-world anchor for the spell he had originally created to bind Carsten, and which he had used to attempt to bind Sebastian to Ciel. He had explained once to Ciel that the spell he had crafted had required that kind of anchor – the way machines engineers use to lift large loads need enormous counterweights to keep them upright – because it had to bind a being that could belong to more than one world. In these papers, he had written the details of how to craft such a spell, as well as how to identify the boundaries of a reverse-world that might be generated by someone else, how to open a doorway into one's own or someone else's sealed-off world, and how to locate someone who might be inside one of these spaces.

Ciel strongly suspects that Sebastian, or one or more of the beings he is battling, must have enclosed their field of battle within such a space, so that their clashes would not resonate through earth, heaven or hell, and no mortals would witness the terrors of their progress. He is taking a purely intuitive leap, but he can test it to arrive at a reasonably accurate judgement.

To pinpoint Sebastian's location, he needs something from the devil's body, if he is to follow Ambrose's instructions. The first item that comes to mind is the locket-pin Sebastian gave him, which holds a twist of his hair braided together with his demon's hair. It will mean destroying the precious braid, but this is an emergency. It cannot be helped. He is about to run upstairs to get the locket when another thought strikes him.

"Baldroy, would you please bring me that spent bullet in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in Sebastian's room?"

Baldroy hesitates for a moment as he looks from Ciel to Agni and Soma. Soma looks almost despairing, but Agni finally looks resigned, and gives Baldroy a discreet nod, as if to say: Better do what he wants now, and we shall see how we can protect him as we go along...

The man sprints to Sebastian's bedroom, finds the bullet, and brings it back to Ciel. The earl studies it with a magnifying glass, picks up a pocket knife, and carefully scrapes something off its rim, where it is slightly flattened and deformed from having passed through the demon's body.

"What is that?" Finnian asks, peering at the speck Ciel carefully tips into an envelope.

"This may be a speck of Sebastian's dried blood," the earl murmurs. "His blood always returns to his body eventually, when it has seeped into his clothes, or if he is lying in a pool of it – unless he prevents it from doing so for various reasons. Or unless it is too far from his body, or obstructed by something solid. It seems the flattened folds of this bullet trapped a little of it. It might work."

He goes over portions of Ambrose's writing again to be sure he has the details right, then he prepares a blank sheet of paper which he marks with magical words to demarcate its dimensions as representative of heaven at one end, hell at another, and earth between them. Other symbols, carefully circled, represent directions, definitions, positions and commands. Ciel asks for a lamp, rummages around his desk drawer for a pin, and heats the sharp end of the pin in the lamp's flame for a minute. He lets it cool, wipes off the soot with a clean piece of gauze, then pricks his finger with the pin. He smudges a drop of his blood onto the part of the paper that symbolises his own location within earth. Taking the envelope with Sebastian's blood in it, he carefully shakes the speck out onto the paper, into a circle drawn around another magical word that instructs the spell to locate someone.

He checks Ambrose's instructions again, and begins speaking an incantation that will start the process of finding the being to whom that bit of blood belongs.

***

John Jarvis has felt the silver disc Sebastian gave him twitching since half-past-nine in the morning. The butler told him it might twitch occasionally if Lord Phantomhive was upset or agitated about one thing or another. He need not worry about such minor movements. He would know without a doubt, Sebastian had said, if the boy was truly in the greatest distress. The movements would not be minor.

For now, they are small, albeit persistent, twitches he senses. So Jarvis tries not worry about Ciel, and goes about his duties to his parishioners.

***

"You have become a dire threat to the stability of the earth, where all of us ply our trade, even to the dimensions beyond earth," William T. Spears denounces Sebastian in almost uninterested fashion, propping up his eyeglasses with his free hand while his other hand twists the sharp, secateur-like blade of his long scythe within the hole it has made in the devil's chest. "You have also become a dangerous power unto yourself. If the earth is consumed because of the imbalance you create, immortals who reside within the different dimensions of the earth will be uprooted, and we whose duties involve humans will serve no further purpose. Even if you do not destroy the world, and are doing this for power alone, a devil of such magnitude as you are becoming would only gorge on souls by the thousands, and we soul reapers cannot allow that. Therefore, you must be eliminated, and the chains you have put on yourself severed."

"Not so fast," Sebastian grimaces, immobilising the scythe's blade with his fingers. "You may not have noticed, but such chains cannot be severed. They reattach themselves to the one they have been cut from by force. Only one with the key to each chain, who is willing and eligible to have the chain transferred to him, can remove even one of them."

"That is largely true," Spears agrees. "However, there is provision made for a process of severance using the original elements of the spell that formed them – the only drawback to you being that such a process also destroys the one to whom the chains are linked."

"I see you've done some investigation," Sebastian smiles grimly, forcing the scythe backwards out of his body with all his strength, and lashing it away from him with a stroke of his arm. "So why don't you let me finish putting all the chains on me, then you can sever the damned things and kill me?"

As the scythe rebounds, Sebastian seizes the portion of it directly above the blade, and shoves the full length of it back towards the Shinigami who wields it, nearly catching him in the face and forcing him into a stiff but well-executed back-flip.

"Sebas-chan?" Grelle rolls the pet-name off his tongue with an edge to his voice as his scarlet figure emerges from the Shinigami pack. "What are we to make of that singular statement, you naughty creature? Are you suggesting that you came here fully intending to die? If you did, won't you let it be at my hands, oh Romeo?"

"It appears that you have the capacity to provoke sensations of nausea in me in any space, dimension or world," the devil remarks with distaste. "Count yourself fortunate that you are not possessed of a chain and key, or I would snap you in half to remove them from you."

He gathers his strength, and springs like a flash of unearthly black lightning past Grelle, slashing the redhead's nose as he passes him to reach a brace of demons who have chains on them. While Grelle screams bloody murder, Sebastian scuffles with the devils and finally relieves them of their concealed bonds, acquiring two more. He does not come out of this pass unscathed. His fellow-demons have slashed his hip and arm, and the perfectly cut and stitched Phantomhive butler's uniform suffers further damage.

"I too am curious about what interests the scarlet soul reaper," shouts a fairy king loud and clear from the heart of his group of people. "Answer us, demon – have you come here to die? If you have, why? There are easier ways to perish. Why rock the great scale of balance at all?"

"Why did you permit yourself and your people to be linked to the scale by a mortal spell worked using stolen immortal magic?" Sebastian asks the fairy king in return.

"We immortals cannot work one another's magic, but humans can steal and use all kinds if they are skilled enough. They can amplify each magic by combining it with others," the king replies. "Those mortals used an immense blend of magic to offer us a link to the powers of balance. We determined that it would give us control over the fate of worlds. We knew other beings had permitted themselves to be thus linked to the forces of balance. My people had to do likewise, lest the destiny of our worlds be influenced by others, but not by us."

"You were all tricked by those deceptive mortals," Sebastian declares. "They had only one stupid, petty end – to keep a powerful human family in check over the ages, and they used all of you immortal beings to do it for them. Your influence over the powers of balance was only a by-product of what they wished to achieve – a secret connection between you and the mortal house of Phantomhive. That was their despicable aim – to turn your people against Phantomhive every so often, to weaken that family."

"We know that now," the king agrees. "But I do not see why it matters. If a human family is decimated from time to time when it becomes too strong, what is it to any of us?"

"That is the reason I am here battling all of you," Sebastian growls. "Because you do not care, but I do!"

He throws himself at the fairy king, seizes him as he did the first nymph-queen, and unlinks him from the scale and from Ciel, then shoves him away before returning to the relative safety of the empty space at the centre of all the gathered armies.

The fairy king's followers prepare to rush Sebastian, but their ruler holds up a hand and keeps them back. Sebastian has not damaged him much in the lightning-swift process of removing the chain – he has sustained very little injury, and he will heal. Rather, his curiosity grows, and he fixes the somewhat battered devil with a pair of silver eyes, asking sharply: "Do you mean that your sole purpose in facing us all here today is to free and save the last, cursed child of the Phantomhives?"

"Yes."

"A mere mortal child? Do you truly expect any of us to believe that you, a devil, would do all this for a human child?"

"That is the core of the present conflict, is it not?" Sebastian answers. "You would never believe such a thing possible."

***

"He is not in hell, nor in heaven, but within a separate dimension on earth, as I suspected," Ciel murmurs, inspecting the portions of the paper which Sebastian's speck of blood – after mysteriously turning to liquid – has crept towards and seeped into. He checks the sheet several more times against Ambrose's guide to interpreting a basic chart such as the one he has drawn. "He is close by."

"Can you determine exactly where?" Baldroy asks.

Ciel refers to another sheet, then uses his pocket knife to cut out part of the paper into which Sebastian's blood has seeped. He asks for a small, shallow dish of water and a needle. Mey-Rin runs to fetch a ramekin dish with two inches of water in it, as well as a short tapestry needle. Ciel immerses the blood-soaked scrap of paper in the water with an incantation, and floats the needle on the water. The needle begins to swivel. When it settles in one direction, the earl looks in the direction it points in: directly outward from the front of the manor.

He gathers a few sheets of Ambrose's papers that he thinks he may need, folds them, and buttons them securely into one of the deeper pockets of his shorts, then picks up the makeshift magical compass. Holding that object carefully, Ciel leaves the study, hurries down the stairs, and steps out of the house. The needle readjusts, pointing him forward. He begins to walk in the direction it indicates, and everyone follows.

***

"Liar," a rogue angel scoffs from the midst of the horde. "Demons are full of untruth. No one would believe so preposterous a declaration from the unclean lips of a devil."

"I expected no other response," Sebastian states coolly.

"You know, therefore, that what comes next is your end."

"Not before I do what I came here to do," the butler growls and leaps into the fray, towards another chain, unheeding of the slashes, stabs and blows that lacerate his form, draw ugly gobs of blood from him, and diminish his strength.

He came here with a mission, and he will accomplish it before he dies, for he has existed more than long enough, whereas Ciel has barely begun to live. The boy needs a chance – he only needs a chance...

***

"Here!" Ciel cries, stopping a quarter of a mile from the front of the manor house, where the forest begins.

"My senses tell me that we have just stepped through a kind of magical shield," Agni observes. "I thought I felt it as we drove towards the manor this morning, but I was too distracted by the swirling spiritual energy in the air to be certain. Now I am sure."

"Sebastian must have put up a shield to protect us in the manor," Ciel says. "He and Ambrose did that before, when we needed to keep Carsten from attacking Ambrose. Sebastian learnt a hell of a lot of magic from Ambrose in the month that he stayed with us, and I would wager no mean amount that he's learnt even more since from the papers left behind. I think he has erected this shield around the manor to prevent immortals from passing through to hurt us."

"So the enclosed, otherworldly space you were talking about earlier would have to begin only outside the shield, am I right?" Agni asks.

"That is most likely. The needle indicates that one possible entry point to it is here before us."

"Can you open a doorway to it?" Soma inquires.

"If I follow Ambrose's instructions, I ought to be able to."

The earl sets the compass on the ground, and takes out one of the sheets of paper he put into his pocket before leaving the study. He goes over what is written, then refolds it and puts it back into the pocket, which he buttons down securely.

He speaks a line of magical words, extending his arm with his fingers pointing outward as if he were stiffly holding out his hand to shake someone else's. As he draws his arm firmly downward, a line of light appears, as if an invisible surface were being sliced open by his fingertips.

"This must be the kind of opening Sebastian said we emerged from after being trapped in that nowhere-world," he tell the others. "I am going in. Stay here, and wait for me."

"Not on my life," Soma growls at him. "If you are going in there to help Sebastian, we are all going in with you!"

"No question about that!" Baldroy says. "I swear, my lord, if Mister Sebastian heard we'd let you go anywhere into that space without us, our lives wouldn't be worth living when he comes back. Damn it, they're probably already not worth living, considering we're letting you do this at all!"

"So we might as well go in there with you, as we're dead whether we do or not," Finnian declares, while Mey-Rin nods furiously.

"Tanaka, I want you to go back to the house, in case Elizabeth comes–"

But that very moment, they hear Lizzie's voice calling from down the pathway through the forest. "Ciel! Ciel? Whatever are all of you doing?"

"Lizzie!" Ciel yells as she orders her driver to stop and jumps out of the carriage. "Get back into the carriage, go to the house now with Tanaka, and stay there!"

"Ciel!" she gasps, ignoring his orders and rushing up to him. "What is that light? Did I see you preparing to step through it? What is happening here?"

The earl gives it a moment's thought, and decides that Lizzie has the right to know what is going on. After all, if he can save Sebastian, she may well be the one whose future will be most affected by these developments.

"Lizzie, Sebastian is in danger because he is trying to save me from destruction by a magic spell some people cast on Phantomhive a long time ago. Sebastian is... something more than human, but he is going to die for my sake unless I can stop him. I am going into that world where he is battling my enemies as we speak. We may all perish in there. So I want you to go to the house now and–"

"If you imagine that you are going into any kind of danger without me, then you don't know me very well at all," Lizzie breaks in with a surprising firmness in her voice. "If Sebastian is sacrificing himself for you, and you intend to help him, then I shall too. You are my cousin and my fiancé, and he saved my life, remember?"

Ciel doesn't know if he wants to strangle her or hug her for her loyalty. But there is no time to decide now. He may already be too late to help Sebastian. He stares into her emerald eyes and sees purity and love and determination, and realises that even if he forbids her to come with them, she will in all likelihood jump through the opening by herself. Better to protect her in the midst of their group. He also swiftly decides that if they all come out of this alive, then this is going to be as good a time as any for his future wife to learn what Sebastian is, and what he means to Ciel.

"Agni, Baldroy, Finnian," the earl says firmly. "I don't want one scratch on Lizzie or Soma. Protect them with your lives. Mey-Rin, look out for yourself. Tanaka, stay here in case we need someone on this side."

In unison, they answer solemnly: "Yes, my lord."

With that, Ciel Phantomhive, his household and his friends step through the magical doorway and vanish from Tanaka's sight.
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Devilish Impulses