“The ssage is,” the Demon said, hands lifted into fists, “‘I’m here to kill you all.’”
For a mont, I stood frozen, shocked at the sudden declaration of intent. But Ainash clearly wasn’t deterred. In an instant, she lunged toward it, whip twirling around her in a whirlwind of flas.
The Demon sneered and leaned back, dodging one strike, lifted its arm, parrying the second, and then at the third, it reached out and grabbed the whip out of the air. It all happened so quickly I could barely follow. Then it yanked the whip toward him, and Ainash was pulled toward his grasp.
I imdiately broke from my stupor, shooting off a couple Rays of Frost and running forward to Ainash’s rescue. However, only one of the Rays hit, and it didn’t seem to do much to deter the Demon. But my mind was drawn toward one specific elent of the damage notification I got.
You have struck Level 61 Devil for 58 damage using Ray of Frost.
Level 61Devil.
Fuck.
I had no ti to ruminate on that number, though. Ainash was moving quickly toward the Demon, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t do well against this thing in hand-to-hand-combat. But just then, a Firebolt from behind impacted the side of the Demon’s head, blowing up right against it. I slowed down, relieved.
And then the smoke cleared, and I could see again. The Demon was still standing perfectly still, and Ainash’s head was in its hand. She scread aloud as I saw its fingers flex, squeezing her face with incredible pressure.
Crack. Was that…was that her skull, fracturing under the pressure?
“No!” I yelled and continued my charge.
The Demon glanced over at , looking slightly annoyed, and held her wincing head to face . I could see her give a pleading look.
“Stop,” it said in a calm voice. “Or the thing dies. One squeeze, a simple movent of the fingers, and it’s over for her.”
Reluctantly, I slowed to a stop just a few paces away from it. From behind , I could hear that Erani, who had apparently been running at it too, also stopped moving. I didn’t dare take my eyes off of our enemy to look back at her, though.
“What do you want?” I asked, trying to keep panic out of my voice.
It shrugged. “Not really sure, to be honest. Man, y’know, when they said they could only get a ten percent Projection, I was a bit worried. I an, I got that it was short notice, but was I really going to be able to beat the people who had evaded our forces for so long? At ten percent power?”
I just looked at it. What was it even talking about?
“And really, they didn’t have to rub it in. Seriously, telling that, even if a better Projection was available, they wouldn’t allow to use it? Fucking assholes. ‘Xhag isn’t authorized for a forty percent projection, he isn’t ntally stable enough.’ Fuck off.”
He? I didn’t even know Demons had genders.
“But now, I’m not too worried. I an, sure, you’ve still got your little ti travel powers. One look at your face when you saw for the first ti told you hadn’t seen before, that was obvious. So you’ve probably got one more tiline you can flee to, or sothing.” He looked at and seed to sense the fear from my eyes, looking through the gaps in my helt. “Yes, we do know about your ti travel. I an, we don’t have perfect knowledge of what that little Class of yours can do, but we aren’t those dumbass Humans with the Koinkar kingdom. They don’t know shit. You can tell them fucking anything and they’ll eat it up. You know we told them you eat the souls of your victims?” He laughed. “Can’t believe they bought that.”
I stood, still tense despite the Demon’s relaxed tone. Or, rather, because of his relaxed tone. How could soone act like they’re just making conversation while literally holding a child hostage? “Why are you telling all of this?”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes, looking genuinely irritated at my question. “Y’know, I haven’t been able to talk to anyone for weeks. Fucking weeks. Much less anyone who’s actually good at conversation. Fucking bureaucratic Demons. And now, I finally get to talk to soone who’ll actually listen, and you ask why I’m talking to you? Because I want to, jackass. Fuck, I didn’t realize how irritating you were going to be. This is going to be so fun.”
“What is? Why are you holding her hostage?”
“Why? Well, mainly, I just wanted to be sure I saw your eyes.”
I blinked, feeling him peer into . “W-what? Why?”
“Eyes are the center of Human emotion, right? If I see your eyes, I can see how you feel?”
I looked at the Demon, still panicked, but now confused as well. “Uh, yes? I guess? P-please, if you want to know more about Humans, just let her go and we can—”
“No, no, you’re mistaken.” He squeezed Ainash’s skull even harder and I could feel her pleas for to save her flood into my mind. “I just wanted to make sure I had it right. I wouldn’t want to miss your expression. Even if you do reset all of this, it honestly just seems so cathartic to see.”
“My expression? For what? What are you talking about?”
“I want to see your expression when I do this.”
And then Ainash’s head imploded. Just like the Demon had said, a simple flex of the fingers, and he crushed her skull in on itself. I instinctively leaned back as a few droplets of sap-like blood were flung onto my face.
I refused to look down at it. At the corpse. I refused. I refused. I refused. Shaking, I kept my eyes trained straight on the Demon. I heard Erani scream behind . But I refused to look. I refused to think about it. She wasn’t dead. Not really. I could go back. I could. I could go back and she’d be okay. But rationalizing that thought did nothing to quell the fear of knowing this Demon could do that. Of seeing the gory sight, even if it was just out of the corner of my eye. The flecks of bone that now scattered the ground beneath us.
But I didn’t look. I could not look. I had to stare straight ahead at our enemy. My hand shook. My entire body shook.
And while all of this was happening, the Demon was laughing. Cackling. Doubled over, arms wrapped around his stomach, out of breath. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He looked back up at my face with a wild smile, and only laughed even harder.
“You…” I could barely get words out of my mouth, much less think coherent thoughts. I could barely understand what’d just happened. He just…killed her. Like that. In an instant.
“The look on your face!” the Demon yelled through its laughter. “I was totally right! It’s all in the eyes!”
Unconsciously, I took a step forward. Then another, and another. I walked right up to the giggling Demon. “I’m going to fucking kill—”
Suddenly a hand was wrapped tightly around my throat.
You have been constricted. 81 damage.
Your Health is 379.
I couldn’t get air to my lungs. The Devil, in an instant, had stood straight up and reached out, strangling and lifting off of the ground. His face was completely serious.
“No,” he said, “you won’t.”
And then I was flying through the air, apparently having been flung away. And then I slamd into a stone wall, harder than I thought was physically possible. The entire surface I struck shook, like a localized earthquake.
You have been slamd against sothing. 1.6k damage.
Dark Plate has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 230.
Your Health is 149.
I felt myself fall flat on the ground, out of a physical indent my body had made in the rock from the extre impact. I could barely move from the pain and surprise of it all. The Demon, that fast, it’d completely disabled and then thrown so hard it dealt enough damage to kill several tis over. The only reason I was alive was because of Dark Plate.
I slowly raised my head, up to where the Demon had been standing. But it wasn’t standing there anymore. My eyes widened. Where was it? Was it behind ? Was it about to kill ?!
But then a sickening impact ca from the right. I looked over and saw Erani’s corpse a dozen paces away. There was a hole the size of a fist in her stomach. She crumpled to the ground, with the Demon standing above her. Now both of my companions were dead, and I should have been already.
Blood covered the entire battlefield. Between the mutilated corpses of Ainash and Erani, and also my own injuries from the force of hitting the wall so hard, it’d all mixed together and painted the rocks.
The Demon walked toward . He was also painted by blood. But honestly, I could barely tell what was from his victims, and what was just the natural pignt of his skin. The red of the blood on his hand—the sa one that’d killed Ainash and now Erani—blended into the already blood-colored hue of his fist.
“Wh…” I muttered, trying to keep my eyes open, “what is… what’s…”
He bent down and threw the helt of Dark Plate from my head, peering down at my face and drinking in every last detail. It felt like he was trying to soak in the look of my face at this mont.
“Y’know,” it said, “I think I was right about the eyes being important to see, but honestly, I really think you just have to see the whole face to be able to appreciate it all.”
“W-what are you talking about?” I coughed. “See what?”
“The pain.” Its expression quickly turned to anger. Fury. “The emotional tornt. The fear of being in a situation so fucking awful, so inescapable, of seeing soone with absolutely infinite power over you. Of seeing soone like that use that overwhelming power just to see you suffer. To punish you. For sothing you barely even had anything to do with. For sothing that isn’t even your fucking fault! You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And now you’re going to die. To lose everything you cared about. And for what?! Because soone else made a mistake?! Because soone else decided they wanted you dead?! Because soone else decided that they wanted to use their power to hurt you today?! I want to see you realize how fucking unfair it is! To see you realize that you could never win, in their eyes! You had no chance, from the start. Nothing. There was nothing you could have done to prevent them from killing you. Nothing you could have done to appease them. Their ravenous fucking appetite for power over soone else. Every single day you lived, you lived so you could die right now. And not a single choice you could have made would’ve changed this outco. They would have always killed you. One way or another.”
I stared at the Demon. Its face showed an indescribable expression of rage. Honestly, I felt a bit of whiplash from the constant, quick changes in his mood, back and forth between calm, hysteria, and now anger. But his fury didn’t seem to be aid at . Not really. He looked straight through , like he was ranting to himself and I was just the audience. He seed completely deranged.
“Who… are you?” I got out.
He blinked, his eyes refocusing on now. “I’m…” He paused, as if thinking for a mont. Then he started speaking again. “My na is Xhag’duulinithar’obaba’iidook’naisantipoduun’torobaroxhixhonxhaxintep. That is my full, unneutered, unrestrained na. It is my na.”
I frowned. “I…”
“But you don’t need to know that. My na? You Humans would never get it. You don’t understand what it ans. I know you won’t rember it, anyway. Just call … Xhag’duul. That’s around how short your Human nas normally are, right?”
I took a breath. Just keep him talking. “Okay, Xhag’duul. Can I ask you sothing?”
He pursed his lips. “Actually, no, you can’t. I don’t think there’s anything you need to ask . There isn’t anything you need to know. All you need to know is that I’m going to be the one to kill you.”
I coughed in pain. He was still unbearably close, hot breath on my face as he leaned down over my body on the ground. But I smiled regardless, croaking out so last words. “Y’know… a lot of people have killed before. You won’t be the first. However, I suspect you also won’t be the last. I don’t stay dead that easily.”
“Oh,” it grinned in what seed to be a mixture of frustration and satisfaction. “I know. I know all too well how hard it is to kill you. But trust . I will be the one to kill you.”
“Would you at least mind telling why?”
“I don’t mind, but I don’t think you’ll like the answer.”
“Try .”
“Answer’s simple, actually. I want sothing. And if you die, I get it. I get it all back. I don’t really give a shit who you are, or what you’ve done, what you say, or what you want. You could be anyone. Any background, any personality. Thief, king, murderer, philanthropist, beggar, doctor, sinner, saint. It’s all irrelevant. You just need to die if I want to be happy. I don’t make the rules. I don’t give the orders.” He took a breath. At this point, whatever rage he’d been feeling before seed to have petered out. Now, he looked more somber than anything. “Really, I have no reason to want to kill you. Other people do, but not . Not personally. I’ll take joy in your death, because you’ve caused so much pain. But you didn’t an to, and you didn’t do it on your own. It’s more that other people cause pain because you exist. So I want to tell you, in the most sincere, genuine way that I possibly can, one that I don’t think any other Demon could ever say—I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I have to do this to you. I wish we could part ways amicably. But I want sothing, so you have to die. It’s that simple. So, I guess if I had to put it in a phrase—”
The Demon, Xhag’duul, gripped his hand around my head. His fingers covered my face. And, as he leaned forward, eyes peering down through the gaps in his fingers to look straight into , he smiled and shook his head.
“It’s nothing personal.”
You have been crushed. 1.2k damage.
Your Health is 0.
You have died.
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