Demon's Blood
It was black.
Pitch black.
It shrouded everything. Every nook and crevice. Every crest and fall. Every inch and foot. It swallowed the sky. It scooped up the stars and spirited them away to another time and place. It took the ground underfoot and blanketed it in void as thick as midnight.
Then it started to move.
The blackness shifted. It slithered and crawled. It undulated. It slopped over and down, up and back, left to right and inward. It pulsed like a living, breathing thing. Then it stopped.
There was a dull roar with that place. It quavered as it shifted all around. The sound seemed to come from everywhere all at once, low, and drowning out the silence. No. Not a sound. A dull, pervasive roar reverberating out of the shadows. A low growl from the black.
It stopped with everything else.
Everything froze when she did. She had reached only one, bare foot out, and everything around her had sounded in protest. She froze. And it stopped.
For an eternity, there was only black and silence. She stood there, naked and alone in the darkness. The void stretched on all around her forever, and wouldn't let her leave.
Fear started to creep into her heart. Ice had formed in her veins. They didn't feel real. She didn't feel real. But those black thoughts began to mirror the dark around her just the same. She could almost feel it working its way into her. Seeping into her. Like an infection. But there was still too much of her there for it to force its way through and in. It wrapped tight about the outside, sliding around and across her skin like slimy silk. But it could only do that. It could not get inside.
She took another step forward.
The blackness was louder this time – angrier. It shook about her, nearly collapsing.
And she took another step.
That dull roar became a thundering bellow, black raging maelstrom whipping and slashing about her in a wild frenzy. It thrashed at her. It slapped its oily, thick essence at her naked flesh and she felt it ooze free and slide off.
But that was all it could do. She did not stop.
One more step, and it was over.
The night sky was free and open around her once more. Stars blinked down at her from above just past the darker clouds that circled overhead and behind. She chanced a look back at them – or felt her head do so anyways. There, not far back and behind, stood an old castle bright against the night with flames and light.
She was running. Or someone was. There was only a moment as she stared at that sight, brow furrowing before she was twisting back around. It was all so familiar. And so very alien all at once. She was nearly tripping over her own feet in her panting haste to escape.
She looked down. But they were not her own feet. And neither was that voice gasping desperately for air as it hurled itself away.
The boy heaved. He choked, and he spluttered, and he coughed. But he did not stop. His body ached. His legs burned, his feet bled, and his arms thrashed through long weeds grown rank and thick. They snapped at him like tiny whips all over his body. But he did not stop.
He could still hear their cries. He could still see their twisting faces as those men came over and through the walls, cutting the women down – one, by one.
He had never liked them. Not really. Most of them had been cruel. To him. To each other. But the hot spray of their blood against his flesh had done away with all that in swift, merciless strokes.
He ran, tears flying down over his cheeks even as his short legs pumped harder and harder. He was not sad. He did not cry for them. Most of them might even have deserved it. No. Those tears were for himself. For his fear. For his weakness. For the bloody death he could feel closing tight around his throat with icy hands ready to choke the life out of him there that night.
Something caught his foot. In an instant, he was down on his face in the dirt, stone tearing into his hands and chook. He cried out, but the earth took care of stifling him quickly enough. A fistful of dirt rushed up into his throat. His body flung over, and he was abruptly on his back staring up at the night sky.
The mud came flying out of his mouth first. Grit and wet clung to his teeth as he hacked over onto his side. It was a disgustingly pitiful sound there in the dark. He almost couldn't believe it was his.
The screaming had stopped some time ago. But the flames kept on burning all the same. They were all dead now, he knew. Every last one of them.
And he lay there panting in the dark, sucking in terrified, wheezing breath after breath. He was the last one. He was the only one. All of them … were dead.
One of them had been his mother. He caught a flash of coal black eyes there in the dark, but it was only his imagination. Those eyes were dead now too – as cold as they had ever been in life. Somehow, someway … there had been a brief flicker of warmth at times when they fell on him. But that warmth was gone now – swallowed in those burning lights on the horizon.
It was dark, and cold. He had started to shiver there, lying on the ground. It was as much for fear as for everything else. She had told him in soft, forceful whispers so often – he was meant for greatness. He was being called up to do something worthy of the gods themselves with that single life given to him.
But it had all been for nothing.
He watched as those promises and dreams were swallowed up and washed away in the cleansing fires of that old keep. Now he was alone. He was lost and alone there so far from anything he knew. Everything of his life – he just watched burn away to ash.
He lay there. He lay there for a long time. He lay there watching the keep burn. He lay there watching his life burn. He lay there until the lights had begun to die back down and the fires withered away to dust.
His hands started moving. He could barely see through the dark and his tears both. But he was still alive. He started to pick himself back up.
Then he heard it.
Footsteps.
He froze again instantly. Everything in his mouth he swallowed back and down. He held his breath.
They drew closer – quick and quiet. He might have missed them had it not been so still and silent out there. Had the screams not died out so long ago.
He stayed where he was, unable to think or move. His mother had told him to run, and he had not dared disobey her in that moment. But she was dead now. And they were coming for him next.
A shadow loomed up out of the blackness and burning twilight. It leapt out of the stillness into life and hovered above him.
He betrayed himself again. He gasped.
The figure stopped there, dead in its tracks. He could barely see it in the dark – it blotted out the night. But it could see him. What he knew must be its head lowered down toward him.
There was a pause. It seemed an eternity that they stared at each other there in the dark – he, trembling in fear, the other only waiting to end him too.
After a time, he closed his eyes. And swallowed.
But the end never came.
Eventually, he looked back up. The figure was still there, watching him.
As soon as he looked, though, it spoke.
"Flee child," it said simply, sounding as harried and weary as he. "There is nothing in this accursed place for you. Begone."
He did not move, though. The other hardly waited for him to do so. Before he knew it, the other was passing over and away from him. He flinched as the figure did so, but it did not slow.
He lay there still for a moment more. Then he heard the strangest thing he could have thought to hear out there in the black that night. A baby crying.
His eyes twisted back toward the figure, but it flitted away all the faster into shadow. Eventually, the crying faded away as well.
There was no relief. There was no surprise. There was only the boy in that blackness, left alone and alive.
The sound of blood rushing through his veins was the only one left and the sweetest he could have heard.
He was alive.
They were all dead, but he was still … alive.
The boy fell back and laughed. The sound tore free from his throat. He laughed long, and hard. He wasn't quite sure why. He wasn't quite sure how. All the fear bled away in an instant, and there was only that laughter there alone in the dark.
It kept on for a long time.
And then that blackness stabbed her right in the chest.
Right in the heart.
And she screamed.
Breathe.
She gasped instead, her eyes flung wide. They darted one way and then the other, wildly, taking in the whole of the room about her. It was sumptuous – clean. Too clean. Almost … pristine. She could all but feel the shadows clinging to every ray of light in that low place.
Her chest rose and fell unevenly. The bust of a flowered, silken dress was draped across it, blossoming angrily with each sharp, heaving breath. Her dark eyes flashed around the room as quickly as they could, but none of it was familiar.
Pain. Pain was the first thing to come back.
Memory … and pain.
Her back arched and she tried to cry out but no sound came. Her voice caught in her lungs. They filled full to bursting as the nightmare came back to her, and her hands flung out, fingers like talons clawing at the sheets about her in desperation and fury. She had been lying on a bed. In the next instant, it splintered in two to the cracking sound of bursting wood.
She was crouched against the floor on her feet and knees then, hands wrapped tight around her skull. It throbbed and pulsed against the thundering rush of the hot blood in her veins, all the agonizing torture of that months-long nightmare come back to strike at her full on. She scratched, clawed, and howled against it, but it was too much. It overwhelmed her.
She could already feel the blackness seeping its way up and around, slithering out from its hiding places deep in the cracks of her soul. She fought against the one, and drowned in the other. And they crushed her into nothingness between.
Blood slipped down the side of her face from beneath her fingernails. It burned hot into the elegant dress she now wore.
And then the room exploded.
Everything blasted backward and away, splintering into dust. That bright, beautiful place came apart, rent asunder by a sudden, violent tempest. The walls ripped free, bricks slapping back against stone and rippling outward like a struck pond. Still, dank air whipped up in a ferocious gale howling aloud as it scraped stone and metal and wood. Then it all went suddenly still, as quickly as it had come apart.
After another moment, she moved. She straightened. There was nothing left of that room now, but she didn't even notice. She stood there in the middle of it, staring straight ahead.
There was only one way out of that place. As she moved to pass through it, though, something pushed back.
The air rippled. She could see it waver before her like water. It forced her back a step. More than that – it threw her back off her feet to the floor.
She lay on her back there, staring. Something caught in the corner of her eye.
She looked that way.
Something was sticking out of that blasted scene of refuse. Something familiar. From another time – another life. But still familiar.
A silver hilt jutted out from a pile of shattered wood. She stared at it for a moment. Then she twisted over onto her side and picked herself back up.
Her fingers wrapped around the blade in its sheath. It burned her skin, but it would not come alive in her hands. It would do that for no one now. The only person who could have taken it had died long ago.
She pulled it free.
And she rounded back on that space that lead out for a moment. Just a moment. Then she pushed right through.
It resisted. The air closed in tight about her like a net, choking her body in a vice. The more she tried to force her way through, the more it tightened. Pain lanced through her body all over. But her eyes were black. Cold, and black. And they felt nothing.
It shattered like glass.
A hallway stretched before her. All the lights had shattered behind and she could barely see just what lay ahead. It didn't matter. She started clawing her way forward and out of that hole just the same.
The blood in her veins was ringing. It had been hurt. She had been hurt. They were going to return the favor.
And it was not long before they both found someone else.
"Ahah! I knew there had to be reinforcements down here. Couldn't be that powerful by himself, I said!"
"Blasted shadow-SCUM!"
Steel sounded abruptly with a loud roar. Grunting and growling followed quickly after, bouncing off the walls. A man in leathers did so as well a moment later, skull cracking against stone and steel before an axe could sweep up and bury itself deep into his gut. The stout little man who had put it there twisted back around, snarling. A knife took him in the throat beneath his helm.
A few more daggers followed the first when the dark-skinned Dwarf refused to fall. He stumbled a bit after that, and finally did.
Another man in leathers, black cowl pulled down over his face, stepped in before the Dwarf could even hit the ground and slashed his throat open wide for good measure. There were a few other little dark-skinned men in armor scattered about on the floor – all dead. Only three of those hooded figures remained standing.
"We'll just put an end to this here and now," the one man who had cut the Dwarf's throat grinned down at the corpse, slipping his long knife back in at his belt. "We'll see the end of Irenicus and your little guild war before this day is through."
He spat down at the little corpse, and tapped it with his boot.
"Now, let's foreclose on this little business here and–"
They were all staring at her then. She stood out in the middle of the corridor, looking to each of them in turn. She didn't say a word.
None of them moved for a few seconds. They just stared at that sight before them – that dark, disheveled, raven-haired woman in her elegant dress so out of place in that cold, black pit. For a few seconds.
Then they all came at her at once.
There were three more bodies littering the floor before that next moment was through.
They pounced on her like wolves, and died squealing like rats crushed back against the walls. In the end, only she was left standing – there in the midst of it all. Nothing recognizably human remained. The rest of the room lay still.
Everything shook around her of a sudden. For once, it had nothing to do with her. Dust sprayed down from the ceiling, blanketing the blood and death all around below. A few chunks of stone did as well, splintering apart as they cracked against the ground.
She glanced upward. Her black eyes pierced through metal and stone, and she could just barely make out that blaze above. It was bright, and terrible.
It was him.
She started forward, and that place fell away behind her. She didn't see it anymore. She didn't see the bodies, or the death, or the decay anymore. She didn't see the pain. All she saw was that bright beacon – that power. It had torn into her flesh so many times that she could still feel it inside her even so far away. She could still taste everything.
He never knew, but they had taken just a little to stay alive. To keep them both in there alive.
And when she found him again, they were going to take the rest. All of it.
They were both going to eat him alive.