Chapter 3 - The Love of a Child

Eyes traveled over the pages of the tome in the candle lit room. The book was old, worn, and perhaps even decayed in a few places. But the words on the pages were as clear as ever. As the eyes traveled across the text, they stopped on a subject entitled The Gateway, in which the following content read via an unknown language;

A pure human soul may be used to channel energy. But the energy could be enough to extinguish the life of the human. In cases where The Gateway is concerned, this death will not be fitting, as the Gateway must be alive in order to channel the energy sent forth. The Gateway is, in every case, a female, as the female body is that which gives life, and life is in itself energy.

Upon instances of demonic powers ready to be set forth, The Gateway should be chosen carefully. The more pure the female, the stronger her connection to her demonic master, and the stronger her disconnection with the energy being channeled through her shall be. This will give the Master more control over his newly acquired slave, especially in cases where possession is concerned.

A sigh was made. Words were mumbled, "It reads like stereo instructions," before the page was turned, where more information continued;

In order to allow the female to live, it is imperative that her blood be imbued with that of the demonic master. Once her blood has been strengthened to allow her to live, she will continue to channel energy until her life is ended.

The book was closed. The hands that held it turned it onto its side before placing it upon a desk. The person who'd been reading the nameless tome moved away from the book and the candle was blown out. Things were becoming much more interesting now it seemed.

--

"So, let me get this straight if I may young sir, you're telling me that first, you decide to drag the son of Sparda into this, and then you decide to simply, how do you humans say, split?" The eloquently dramatic voice spoke. "Surely you jest!"

The only light that was offered was given by the three large hooded figures who held torches in their gloved hands. The trees standing in the background of the woods shrouded out any watching eyes there may have been from the distance of the countryside house. The person who'd been speaking, a rather tall, though not as tall as his hooded companions, and slender individual whom wore a long black robe with a collar that pointed out from his face sporting silver designs on the edgings, paced back and forth in front of the three figures behind him, across the front walkway again and again. His skin was pale, very pale, and his hair was long and black. Upon his shoulder sat a raven, and on his back was harness a long sword, almost resembling a Japanese Katana, but not quite as the hilt was designed differently with two bars jutting out of each side, an onyx placed in the tip of each.

His eyes were also obsidian in color, and as he'd spoke, he stopped for a moment and narrowed a brow, glancing up at one of his hooded companions. The man who he was actually speaking to, standing on the front porch of his home, watched as the pale, pacing individual stopped in front of the three hooded figures and asked him, "Is it just me, or do you feel as if you're standing in front of a Klu Klux Klan convention? Oh that's right, they wear white." He turned to the three fully, "Off with you, ye foul tempered, oddly smelling," he waved his hands for the words, "things! If I truly needed you, I would've told my daddy, so go on!"

The three turned and began moving away, offering some relief to the man standing on the front porch of his home. He wasn't entirely sure how they would react to his news, and without the three hooded figures, he felt much safer, well, he would have if their leader wasn't still there. Reaching up, he pushed his fingers through his blood red hair and parted his lips, "Arias, keep your voice down."

Arias lifted a brow, then he turned around slowly to face the man who was standing at a higher level than he. "Ah, yes, the girl." He began stepping toward the steps of the man's porch, each concealed foot he lifted up feathered by a black smoke that seemed to waft off of his robe itself, and he held his hand up toward the red haired man. "The reason you've decided to label yourself treasonous, is she not? After all," the demon named Arias added as his foot reached the top step, the man before backing away slightly, "the love a father professes for his daughter runs deep, and love causes a person to become fickle, something my mother taught me, perhaps one of the only things I can attribute to having pride over receiving from the whore." He spoke the words blandly as if he didn't have a care in the world for his mother nor did he hate her. He even emphasized his line with a melodramatic sigh.

Arias stood up straight once he'd reached the top, his sword glinting in the moonlight as it hung off of his back, his face a slight bit stony in expression. The man shook his head, "I'm not betraying you, I'm simply saying that I can't go through with this."

The stony expression on Arias's face melted into a more annoyed one as his obsidian eyes rolled up, and he turned slightly, stating, "Nathan," then he began to step, "Nathan," he added again, "Nathan, Nathan, Nathan." His voice was chiding as if he were a father, and rounding Nathan, he placed his hand across the mans shoulders, coming to his side, his other hand on his heart. "You've wounded me, don't take me for one of those," he waved his hand out at the front yard and thought for the word, "KKK...things!"

Nathan looked out at the yard with his green eyes and then he glanced down, having always hated Arias's penchant for dramatics and acting, as it tended to throw him off in what he wanted to say. Arias was, by nature, a very manipulative demon, and Nathan knew it for a fact. So he began, "I'm not, Arias, you understand me better than they do. I can't just sacrifice my daughter, she's all I have left."

"Oh God!," Arias drew back both remorsefully and irritated, walking away from the human before turning around to face him completely. "She's all you have left? What the hell are you babbling about, my depressed, abreactive friend."

"Abreactive?" Nathan asked, confused over the word.

"Yes, you're apparently releasing emotional tension from drawing on some repressed trauma that happened in your own childhood, more than likely the death of your parents, and now you feel that losing your wee little one will cause you to relive that." Arias shrugged, "Quite frankly, I remain unmoved." Even his raven was as still as a statue.

"I'm not trying to move you," Nathan said much more strongly than he'd previously been speaking, "I'm only trying to let you know I'm not going to go along with this anymore."

Arias scratched his cheek, his brow narrowed slightly, trying to figure out what the man was telling him. The raven squawked. "So you're saying sir, that you'd rather give up, hmm, an immense amount of power, a chance at immortality itself, all for the simple love of a girl who'll eventually die anyway. That makes," he drew out, then said more pointedly, seriously, "no sense."

Nathan groaned, rolling his eyes, and he turned away from Arias, looking down at the top of the porch, "People weren't meant to live forever, Arias. No one was, not even you demons if what I've learned is any indication. Eventually you die too."

Arias smacked his lips with a very dry expression on his face, brows in a flat, straight line, as he told Nathan, "Yeah well, dude, I'm not exactly gonna die any time soon. Well, not that I'm Mrs. Cleo, but," Arias's tone changed again, and he moved toward Nathan, "all I need to do now is ensure that you deliver the girl on the date we need her. We kinda can't sacrifice her if we don't have her to sacrifice."

"No!," Nathan turned and yelled suddenly at Arias. "I'm not sacrificing my daughter for you!"

"Keep it down!" Arias returned, "She's asleep! I'd hate to have to sing her a lullaby!" Suddenly, with the word lullaby, Nathan grunted, the sound of a dagger being pulled from its sheath only a moment before, and Nathan could feel the stabbing pain in his torso. His eyes fell to Arias's cold face, and Arias tilted his head, "Now, young sir, tell me not thine treachery is true, else I'll dig a dagger into you, as deeply as the river flows, as swiftly as the wind blows." His voice was quiet and soft, and as cold as the current weather, the whispers he made to Nathan drawn out slowly to emphasize his point. Arias may have just stabbed the man, but he hadn't hit any vital organs, nor stabbed him deeply enough to have caused any permanent damage.

Nathan stared into his eyes, grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away, the dagger from his torso, and Nathan promptly covered his new wound with his hand, the blood seeping down from the new cut in his shirt, against his fingers.

Stumbling back a bit, Nathan growled out, "You bastard. Leave us now!"

Arias's face was still deadly serious, but that facade died as he suddenly smiled and turned his dagger back into the sheath hidden in his robes. "My poor fool. You do realize that if you don't cooperate with my father, he'll become innately mad, and believe me, he has a severally sore temper. You'd do much better to simply give him what he wants. After all, why die when you can live? What's so hard to understand about that?"

By the time Arias had finished asking his question, he'd headed toward Nathan and placed his fingers beneath the mans chin, lifting it up, looking him over. "Before I depart my presence from you, and you completely decide to depart your life, allow me to say these few words to you. First, Democrities, my father, will rise again, one way or another, whether by your help or without. Second, you have until the morning light to decide your fate. If you become the fickle human most of them are known to be, then I can promise you that you'll die a slow death, painfully, in fact, you'll be wishing for death before it's over. That's the only accord we need to have."

Arias pulled his fingers away from Nathan's chin, and moved to the steps again, his raven perching on his shoulder flying from it and landing on the ramp of the steps, sitting there staring at Nathan, who eyed first the bird, and then the retreating demon as he began to speak, his robes still making that smokey mist like shimmer at the bottom as he stepped, "To her father white, came the maiden bright; But his loving look, like the holy book, all her tender limbs with terror shook." Arias waved his hand, "Expect not so different a look from your daughter, no matter what fate you decide for yourself, my treacherous leach."

Arias seemed to disappear into a waft of smoke slowly once he said that, and Nathan sighed after cringing over his new wound, his green eyes glancing back down at the raven on his front porch steps ramp. Angrily, he suddenly waved his hand at the bird to slap it and shooed it away, "Get out of here!" The raven squawked and took off into the air, and Nathan watched it, then groaned with the pain his actions had caused.

But he continued to stand there for a moment longer. Arias hadn't even mentioned the son of Sparda again, hadn't even bothered to try and talk Nathan back into being on his side, not with the level of manipulation Nathan knew for a fact that Arias had possessed, had seen him do so before. Which in the end told Nathan one thing; Arias really didn't care completely for his fathers return.

Demons, Nathan thought with a scoff. Always out for their own power no matter what or who they hurt in the process. But, at least he knew his choice and his path now.

He had to get his daughter out of here. Before the ritual came. Before they came. Before they killed her.

--

The woods seemed to glow blue in the moonlight. As the dark demon named Arias walked their paths, he stopped near a tree and allowed his raven to land on his shoulder. Looking to the side where his raven sat, he spoke, "So, he chooses death, does he, Puck?" After speaking, Puck made another squawk, and Arias sighed in return, as if the bird had just spoken to him. He'd left Puck to watch over Nathan for him, and now that he knew Nathan was trying to leave in the middle of the night, he was slightly disappointed. But only slightly. Otherwise he would have handled it himself. "Then follow him, make sure you know exactly where he's going. After all, I have business to attend this fine eve."

The raven took to flight once again, and Arias, who'd spoken in a frustrated fashion, rolled his eyes with a deep, heavy sigh. Then he drug his hand up before his face and inspected his nails idly, as if he were bored. "Never understood why women want to dress these things up," he muttered pointlessly, finally glancing away and up at the sky, where he saw the full moon beyond the branches. "But duty beckons. Time to call daddy."

He turned away from the tree and stepped forward once. Holding out his hands, they began to glow blue, and the sclera of his eyes turned completely black. A whirring sound began, and from the light that had formed on his hands shot powerful surge of energy into the ground, which exploded upward into a constantly glowing pool of energy. The power from his fingertips faded, and his eyes returned to normal. Arias folded his arms together over his chest, and he pursed his lips. Staring into the pool before him now, he spoke. "You failed to mention to me that you wanted Nathan to summon Dante Sparda into all of this."

From the pool came a deep and rough demonic voice, slowly speaking, "My business is my own. Your only task is to hold things together."

As the voice spoke, Arias had formed a cigarette between his fingers which he lit, then took a drag of and rolled his eyes over the words that were spoken. "So, then the great Democrities wants to seek vengeance on the son of the demon who put his own father under, hmm? Fitting, somehow, though I can't image why you'd want to complicate things. Even though he's a bit young, Dante Sparda is no fool, nor is he weak. He could bring all of this crashing down."

"That is my concern, Arias, you'd do well to keep your forked tongue behind your teeth." Arias stuck his tongue out at his father immaturely when that was said and though it was usually a normal tongue, now it actually was forked, and he grumbled slightly. The voice went on without notice seemingly, "Nathan is having trouble adhering to his duties?"

"One might say that," Arias grumbled out, "but I am adhering to mine, and he'll be watched carefully, though it'd be a tremendous help if my dad would tell me all of his plans." Apparently he was agitated, and with good reason.

"I should hope so, my son, for your own sakes."

"Well, if I can please my one and only father," Arias bowed before the pool, then lifted his cigarette to his lips and took a drag of it, adding in a french accent, "zen my life iz complete! However, I find zese zings you've sent for me to, how do you say, command to be a bit lacking in zee style!" Arias meant the robed figures that Democrities had sent with Arias to help do his bidding.

"Do not continue to patronize me, Arias. My powers are growing, and you'll only share in them if you complete your duties satisfactorily." While the voice spoke, Arias sighed and then he flicked the cigarette into the shimmering pool, hoping it hit his father right in the eye. While it wasn't a common practice of Arias to be so immature, he also loved to drive his father insane, and that seemed to do the trick.

The pool began to close without another word, and Arias just waited for it. He knew what was coming, and heard the warping vortexes created by the demons that were being summoned around him. His black hair wafted in the breeze about his face as he slowly slid his fingers around the hilt of his sword. Democrities had become angry again, and Arias knew he was going to attempt to teach his son a lesson.

One by one, the lanky demons with the cyclops eyes of blood red and pale blue skin began to lumber toward him grotesquely, looking as if they were death themselves. These were the most powerful lesser demons Democrities currently had at his disposal, manifested from the souls of those who'd sold themselves to Democrities for the price of immortality, as Nathan would have become if he hadn't apparently betrayed the demon, and they were called Quietuses with good reason.

The nude, androgynous beings lumbered toward Arias slowly, their movements creepy and somber, their heads tilted to one side as if they didn't watch where they were going, only wondered toward whatever life might be around them, whatever their target was, and their arms hung limply at their sides. Five of them were surrounding him now, and as the one behind him got close enough, tentacles sprouted from its head as its mouth opened and ejected a long black tongue from decayed, fanged teeth with a loud shriek. It's arms reached out, stretching, moving at Arias with an alarming pace behind it.

Arias drew his blade and swung it behind his back, cutting its arms off, causing the Quietus to reel away from him, its arms growing back into place while the tentacles on its head thrashed violently. The other three all reached for Arias in succession, and he turned to the side as two arms moved past him, one in front of him, the other behind him. His movements were quick, and he sliced through those arms as well with the black blade of his weapon, then grunted when another arm wrapped around his waste like rubber. From there, the tongue moved about his throat, and Arias forced his mouth shut tightly, grunting loudly with the force he had to exert to turn his body before the tongue could cause him any troubles.

Already, the tip of the tongue had been trying to slice his lips open to shove its way down into his mouth and body to pierce his demonic heart, and while that wouldn't kill Arias, no, it would still leave him out of the picture for a long while. So Arias turned as hard as he could and the force he created swung the beast around from the ground and into another, ramming them both into a tree so hard that the bark flew away from it in several different directions.

Arias tossed his blade into his left hand as they flew and cut the limbs from around him, causing the appendages to fly free of him so that the Quietuses he'd thrown would no longer be holding onto him. Then he turned the blade and jabbed it backwards, behind himself, into the torso of a Quietus behind him, causing the demonic creature to scream chillingly in agony. Black veins began spreading across the creatures skin from his poisoned blade, and as Arias pulled it out, he summoned a powerful force to knock the now dying thing away from him without even looking at it.

Realizing he had a moment of peace now, the other creatures still alive, yet lumbering toward him too slowly to get to him in time to stop him, Arias began to shift energy in toward himself, causing the forest about him to appear to shimmer slowly as if a glass was surrounding him, and then he released it outwards, which made him disperse into a million speckles of blackness everywhere, disappearing from sight.

One might ask why Arias would continue to serve a father who would attack him, he thought to himself as he moved through the woods in a different area altogether. They'd have that right to wonder. Arias hated his father, and Democrities hated him. But the thing that bound their plans together was the trust they held in the others abilities. Arias would become much more powerful once his daddy's power was unleashed, and Democrities would gain an army in the underworld of mass proportions, one that had previously only been rivaled by that of Sparda, the dark knight, the traitor. All it took was the blood of a young, innocent girl, a priestess by chance or not.

That power would then be released, and not only would Democrities be able to defeat his rivals, but he'd also be able to enslave the human race, and eventually, universal domination!

Arias scoffed at the thought. He came to a stop and looked out over the plains before him, at a ranch in the distance. Arias didn't have that much faith in his fathers abilities, universal domination? Please. But it was a chance for power, and what kind of demon would he be to turn down that chance? But, he thought as he looked off into the distance, there was one piece to this puzzle that hadn't yet been attained, though attempts were underway to try.

The woman, Regan Davison.

What a lovely fawn, Arias thought to himself. Such pretty skin, so fair, with hair the very color of blood, a trait that, Arias thought to himself, his grandfather would surely find enchanting in a woman.

The three hooded figures came in behind Arias in that moment, and he spoke, "You know, I never understood my families obsession with blood. All of them, it's so," he shuddered, "vampiristic." Then Arias slowly turned around, sighing as he looked up at the three figures behind him, "Alas, tis not my place to know or care. All I need of you now is to make sure the girl arrives safely in our hands. I'll watch our dear Regan, the last and final piece to this puzzle. If I'm not mistaken, the son of Sparda is quite the womanizer. Perhaps I can use this quirk of his to my advantage if Daddy so wants his revenge on the half devil, though I don't know why. Just let bygones be bygones, for demons sakes. Still, I have to do it satisfactorily," he mocked his fathers words, "so make sure that little girl is with us by tomorrow morning. Now go from my sight, I have no more to give. And tell the others."

The three turned to move away, and Arias looked back at the ranch ahead of him, sighing deeply over his task. Why did he feel like some kind of secretary, he wondered to himself briefly, but then he just disappeared into a puff of black smoke and got to work.