Chapter 39: Oh Look, I've Been Demonised

I looked up from where I had fallen to the floor.

The demon was still there, still advancing. It sensed my attention on it, and shifted into a form, still a dark shape, but with a face. Then it opened that mouth, and it spoke. The voice, its voice…it was truly not of this world. It was here but not, dark and twisted and smooth. A rough bark, and a mocking caress. A crow's caw, of malice and evil. As for the eyes that went with that voice, I would say…I would they would be eyes that had seen great empires be built from the ground up. Then sat by and watched them fall. The type of eyes that would stare out at you from the darkest corners of the deepest abyss, then draw you closer, draw you in then laugh as you fell.

The face it belonged to was one that revelled in the pain and suffering of humans. I felt little consolation in the fact that though he was eternal, though he was unending and evil, he still picked on the weak, like a playground bully. To him, I was weak.

"How I shall delight in making you scream," it said.

I was numb. I was nothing.

"After all, you killed my brother."

Brother?

"Did he not deserve to die?" I whispered weakly.

It cackled, a sound that reverberated around the mountain.

"Oh no, no, no, no, no! He was only looking for food." A jet-black tongue, like a block of glistening, hardened ink, poked out of its mouth and licked at its non-existential lips. "As I am. I am so, so very hungry. But still. You killed him. He will be tortured forever in our master's realm, for daring to come to this world. You see, my brother was a speck of dust in the haystack. I am but the needle. While he, the Lord of Darkness, the Devil, the Ruler of the Underworld, he is the haystack itself."

Varyx.

"He will torture him as I will torture you. A thousand times worse. You, I will make into one of us. Your end will be quick. But once our master is finished, he will begin again and again and again."

Panicking as he proceeded faster, more rushed, greedier than before, I reached for that rope inside of me, feeling for the chain rooted in my heart.

But in the place where that burning fire lived, there was nothing but empty air.

"No!" I screamed, but my voice was ragged from zigzagging up the mountainside. I'd only had a while with it, the beautiful thing, the kernel of magic that lived inside me. I wanted it. I wanted to learn to depend on it like a feral cat that strolled through the neighbourhood every morning. I wanted more.

This was not…not fair.

I didn't get it. How was I supposed to burn out the evil in them when I could not even reach my own magic? I wondered if this demon had ever been human. If anyone could be capable to piercing through to its human heart, if so. Something broke inside when I thought of what Mama could've become.

"You puny humans underestimate how clever we are. Why, I had such fun in the body of a wolf, herding you up the mountain. Now, out of breath, weakened, nobody will hear you scream." His face twisted in a smirk, then soured. "The magical stronghold exists, of course, but to this hour, we have not gotten inside its bounds. One day we will, though. And we will delight in tasting their fine magic. I dream of that feast of delicacies; their screams will be music to my ears. But for now, …I suppose you will suffice."

"Why talk to me? I am a puny human, as you said. Surely if you are hungry, you would destroy me as soon as possible?"

"You cannot buy yourself time. I am not so easily fooled." As if spurred on, he pounced into my mind.

I screamed with all I had left, not much. But I poured it out of me, gasping in between breaths, bellowing my despondence to the world. I had my whole life left, all of it. I wanted to travel the world, to use and treasure my magic, my magic, to find love…to be happy. It wasn't fair…it couldn't be over. I wanted to see Narreta and laugh at Ricco and chat for hours with Saoirse again. I wanted to start again and build a life for myself.

Even Aquanaya had told me, even indirectly. Even I would not wish upon you a terrible fate, not when you have tasted so little of what life could bring you.

Brief flashes of the life I'd had danced in front of my eyes. My twelfth birthday…graduating primary school…dancing in the grass with my father at winter solstice every year. Coming home with Saoirse and walking on the beach at dusk. The dès vu of realising that a moment in time would one day become a memory to hold close when I was afraid. All my cherished moments…times for which I was grateful.

I reached into my mind, to the place where I'd blocked my mind and thrown out the first demon.

His brother was leaping upon it, attacking it, crushing. Breaking, tearing down my shield with every second. Another minute, another hour, or another year later, it was gone.

As if it had never been.

I was empty. I was floating in the air, I was weightless. I was everything, I was nothing.

I still panted, gasping, yelping, screaming, tearing out every scrap of sound from deep inside my shredded throat and flinging it out. The mountain shook with the force of it, the acceptance and denial. But the trees did not sway. The gods did not intervene.

Help did not come.

I had been ready to take it on. Because I had survived this long, I had stayed alive against all odds. I had tasted a morsel, and now I wanted more. I wanted to live. I had been ready to walk into the demon's hands, knowing that I had lived well. A good life. Knowing I'd made my mark on this world. But both the devil and the angel perched on my shoulders, both common sense and irrationality cried out, protesting, fighting back as my body morphed into something dark. Something twisted, something evil, something that was not mine. Something that did not belong.

Something even the Stormbringer had spoken of with disdain and disgust.

Let me live let me live let me live let me live, they cried as one. As one voice, for the first time.

I don't want to die I don't want to die.

My fingernails loosened their weakening grip on the walls of that cave of darkness ready to swallow me up. I felt myself falling, falling deeper and deeper and deeper. I clutched at the kraken tear in my pocket. I almost tossed it into my mouth with my last scraps of being, hoping to feel its healing touch. But it literally floated back out of my mouth. I stared at the cloudy droplet in shock. If it was refusing to heal me, did that mean I was already gone?

The pain of having my magic rooted in me had been excruciating.

Having it ripped out of me was worse. Compared to this, that was a soft place to rest in a field of wildflowers. It was a moonlit swim in a heated pool. I wanted to curl up in a ball, to squeeze out the pain that tore through me, and I wanted to kneel and fling out my arms, to bask in the last of this life.

I don't want to.

I kept falling, the last beams of light disappearing from sight.

The monster, the demon took hold of my body, cackling as it felt out its new form, the one it would abuse and use to do unspeakable things. I felt tears of joy and loss and sorrow, anger and hate running down my face.

They were tears, but they were not the ones I had shed at the bottom of the ocean. Those were of a weak terror. I had been alive then. Now I had no idea when I would taste life again.

You are the fire that forges the blade. You are the mountain that yields not to the storm.

Not anymore.

These tears were a mix of all the emotions, like a swirling soup, a swirling storm raging inside me. I hardly felt them, but they were heavy, a reminder, a reminder of my failure. I had not brought Mama and Grandma back in the end. I had not survived.

Some cry not because they are weak, but because they have been strong for too long.

A voice deep inside me spoke it, from somewhere buried, somewhere safe and ultimately impenetrable, and I leaned towards that ray of strength. It was a crutch, an impermanent one I could not lean on forever, one that would splinter and bring me crashing down.

Too long.

My weight, the weight of all my failures and burdens was too much. It was already broken.

One day you'll be victorious…

Life was a game, and I had lost it badly.

You can be great.

No, I could not. Not anymore.

I was power, I was spent. I was eternal, I was temporal. Then I was nothing, and suddenly I was darkness, I was evil. I was a demon that relished pain. And there was nothing but that demon, cackling as it took me.

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I kept falling, until for the first time I couldn't see that heavenly light, that beacon of joy and home. I fell, feeling the wind rushing past my face, feeling the bone-crunching impact as I hit the bottom. Just like how he had lay sprawled in the grass, body broken.

It was a lonely place, one of undiluted pain and suffering, that claimed lives with its very existence. I was lying on my back in the middle of a place called rock bottom, and it was not the foundation on which I would build myself anew, but a final, hopeless, misery-drowned riverbed on which I lay forgotten.

Rock bottom—it was a world of demons and terror. A realm of desolation and torment. It was a path, where clouds of dark lived and thrived.

An ear-splitting crash clanged through the forest, echoing. Like a funeral bell, it tolled.

A hammer crashed down on the last pieces of Chandani, the Chieftess. I shattered.

And then… nothing.